Buy an album on iTunes and receive credit for already-purchased songs

The functionality isn't there yet but according to the article it could be at some point in the future. If so, this would be really cool. While this particular situation doesn't happen very often but there are times when I buy a single and then later want to get the whole album.

For example, I recently bought the "Lazy Eye" single by Silversun Pickups. The song is good enough to make me want to get the entire album but I'm going to have to re-buy that one song again.

Of course, this assumes you've bought the song from the "album" in iTunes and not a pre-album-release single which is essentially it's own one-track album. Unless they figure out some magic to give you credit for that too but I'm not hopeful.

Should WoW characters get their own blogs separate from the people who play them? What would one sound like? If it were written by my character Sandmoose it might sound a bit like this.

"I've come to the realization I've been training in the wrong talents. While other warriors have specialized primarily in one area I have made the mistake of spreading myself too thin. When running about in dungeons with others they often complain I die too easily or that I don't hold the enemies attention as much as I should.

Plus, I hate being a Wisp! For some reason the whole process of releasing my spirit to the nearest graveyard produces a seriously rank odor that I can't get out of my nostrils for several minutes.

So I decided to take my money to the trainer in Iron Forge and I paid him to break me of everything I've learned and retrain me in the art of protection. He was pretty cool about it. He only charged me one gold piece. However, he said if I ever want to do it again it'll cost me more. Anyway, I've noticed a significant difference in real world fighting. I'm now able to fulfill the "tank" role better now. I still have to get used to using my new abilities and this big shield I carry around now.

Most of my gear has been upgraded appropriately save for a couple of critical pieces: chest armor and leggings. For those pieces I'm still wearing the same items I got back in my mid-20's. I'm pretty sure that with some proper upgrades of those two items I'll be able to come into my own as a real tank.

I've been kicking around Tanaris a lot lately. It's definitely a big change from Stranglethorn Vale -- or STV as the kids like to say. There's not much too look at except for a bunch of sand though. Not many minerals to mine either unless I want to head up to Shimmering Flats to raid a couple of Mithril deposits. But they're all slimy and I hate those bugs.

That reminds me. I have someone's head in one of my bags I need to take to some dude at Steamwheadle Port or whatever that place is called. I really should do that soon. Think about it. I have a severed head in one of my bags! It's disgusting! What's even more bizarre is that my wife (the rogue Elorinn) has the same severed head in one of her bags! How one body produced two heads I don't know but there you go. I hope it's not in the same bag as my cheese and bread. Lemme check real quick.

...

Okay, it's not. But it is getting blood all over my newly smelted Mithril Bars. Oh well. Gotta go get rid of this head. Later.

Hey, we have a new WYSIWYG editor on Gamespot now and it works with Safari. As a Safari user let's see what kind of crazy things I can do.

Found this on YouTube this morning via Digg. Note: it helps to know UNIX to find this funny.

I took my 3-year old son Tyler to the Oakland Zoo this past Saturday. While at the primate exhibit he graced everyone in the area with this insightful comment. "Hey, look at that baboon! He kinda has a red butt!"

Wow. Check this out. Thoughts on Music by Steve Jobs I've heard a lot of people predict that 2007 will be the year DRM will finally go away. But I never thought I'd hear the guy in charge of the worlds most popular online music store publicly come out against DRM in such a direct way. That's got to carry some weight. Here's some choice quotes.

"Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat." "DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music."

This is the version of Prince that us rockers know and love. The Prince who wails on the guitar. Certainly one of the best half-time shows in Super Bowl history. How cool is it to end on Purple Rain in the pouring rain? "Can I play this guitar?!" Yes Prince, you may.

First David Lee Roth and Van Halen get back together. Now the Police are playing the Grammys and might even tour again! Surely the apocalypse is nigh. Can't imagine what those ticket prices are going to be like though. Maybe next Metallica will put out a good album. Nah. No way all three of those things can happen in the same year.

Oh, the joys of joining groups of people you don't know. Here's the story. Emily and I decided we needed to run through the Gnomeragon dungeon with our Night Elf characters to complete some quests and get some good loot. We knew we couldn't handle it with just the two of us so we put a call out to our guild. Someone replied and said they already had a group right outside of the dungeon ready to go. Emily and I ran over to where they were. When we got there the first thing Emily noticed was that two of the guys were just jumping up and down and the third one was running in circles. "Well, this might be interesting", we thought. The second thing Emily noticed was that all three of the other players were Paladins; two Dwarfs and one Human. Again, a red flag but I figured we'd wouldn't be hurting for healers. So we joined the group and headed off into the dungeon. To keep this story short let's just say that nobody knew where they were going and the two dwarf paladins keep running ahead and attacking mobs and bringing them back to the group to fight. We died a lot. No quests were completed. Eventually, everyone quit in anger. It turned out the two dwarf paladins were intentionally trying to get each other killed. What's really sad is that we spent more than two hours busily fighting off mobs these guys would agro before we finally stopped. That and running back to our corpses every time we died. Since most of the mobs in Gnomeragon are far below our level we got almost no XP from the whole debacle which brings me to a little complaint I have about the way WoW assigns XP for Elite mobs. But that's a topic for another post.

My son Tyler (3 years old) has recently become potty trained which is really great. No more changing diapers for him. It also means I have the joy of taking him to public bathrooms wherever we go. This is always an adventure as he finds the sheer variety of equipment in men's bathrooms endlessly fascinating. The first interesting moment happened when Uncle Brent took him an Oakland A's baseball game. Brent had to go to the bathroom so he brought Tyler to the men's room with him. Brent told Tyler to stand right behind him as he did his business in the trough. Tyler, never having seen anything like that before, was amazed. He walked right up to the trough and said, "Hey! Whatcha doing!?" Thankfully, the bathroom was not too crowded at the time. Whenever I take him to a public bathroom the first thing he does is spot the urinals and run over to them screaming, "Hey! Look at these pottys!" with a great big smile on his face looking at me like he's just discovered something really cool. Which, he has actually. Sometimes this is followed up with "Hey! Can I go in this one!" There was the time when someone was using one of the urinals when we walked in. Tyler, not knowing any better, runs up to within a few feet of the poor man and yells, "Hey! That guy's using that one!" For the record we always use the stalls since it's much easier for me to hold him up on the seat than it is to hold him up to a urinal. Anyway, I always put the little paper ring on the seat. Tyler won't let me forget this actually. The first thing he says upon entering the stall in "Hey daddy! Put on the paper! Put on the paper!" Flushing public toilets is amazing fun for him since they're much louder than the average domestic toilet. Upon flushing I'll usually be treated to a high-pitched ear-piercing screaming laugh followed up by "Hey! Look! It's going down!" And on occasion he'll ask where the plunger is. He's very good about washing his hands after going to the bathroom. Again, this is not something he'll let me forget. Recently at Olive Garden he exited the stall and ran over the sink saying "Hey! I gotta wash my hands! They have poo poo and pee pee on them!" It should go without saying that we weren't the only people in bathroom at the time which forced me to reply with "Well, you don't actually have poo poo or pee pee on your hands. You just need to wash them because it's good hygiene". The most embarrassing time in a public bathroom had to be this past Christmas Eve when we had dinner at Texas Roadhouse -- a great steakhouse in Union City. Tyler took his shoes off at the diner table and later announced he had to go to the bathroom. Since he was just in his socks I picked him up and carried him to the men's room. There was only one stall which was already occupied so I held Tyler and told him we had to wait. The floor was wet and I didn't want to put him down since he was just in his socks. He was getting a bit heavy so I decided it might be easier to hold him if I put him up on my shoulders. I wasn't thinking very far ahead here. As soon as I got up on my shoulders he yelled out "Hey! There's a guy in there!" I quickly brought him back down and made sure to find something interesting on the wall to look at when that guy finally did come out.