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I enjoy posting on Twitter and, although one shouldn’t microblog for the attention, it is nice when someone responds to something. I have a small group of 6 or 7 people who regularly say something to me and I appreciate the sense of community that brings. But 90% of my followers never say a word to me so I wonder why do they follow me at all?

A lot of these people are pilots so surely they’d be interested in my aviation related tweets? But no, my ten year pilot anniversary got not a single congrats, I toured the largest ATC facility in the world and no one was interested. Same with my plane building updates.

If I take a look at some of my pilot “buddies” I find comments about a pretty bird on a Cessna windshield gets a conversation of 20 tweets, an “I’m washing the plane” gets a load more.

So today I’m unfollowing a lot of people who don’t care what I write. It seems kind of petty but I don’t need to feel like the unwanted leper (are there wanted lepers??) online as well as in the “real” world.

Since I installed the latest version of Firefox on my Mac Mini this weekend I am having to force quit it every 15 minutes or so, just freezes up for no good reason. A little investigation of the forums suggested it was related to the anti-phishing feature so I disabled that but it already froze again. Maybe this is the time to switch to Safari or Opera?

In other news, I see that the ebay auction prices for PS3 and Wii are coming down. Most of the PS3 auctions were in the $900-$1400 range which is still a tidy profit but not the crazyness we saw on launch day.

I’d never heard of O.J. Simpson before the murders but I gather he was some major celebrity in the sports world until then. Obviously you have to be more than a little crazy to butcher your family, but what the hell is going on with this new book and TV interview that is coming up? Fox has aired some pretty awful material but this has to be just the worst thing ever and of course it will be popular because people can’t not watch such a thing. Ugh, the whole thing is totally beyond me.

A family member’s iMac has been acting up so they asked if I knew how to fix it or would mind taking it to the Apple store for a repair. The problem is software related – the dock has gone AWOL, applications won’t start up and the finder won’t let you browse the hard drive. I’d say something got installed and broke the startup of an essential file service but whilst I know Unix, I don’t know the specifics of the one behind OS X.

I carry the boat anchor that is the iMac around the mall, wait for 30 minutes only for the guy wearing the t-shirt saying “genuis” to tell me to reinstall the OS. Jeez, I could have gotten that answer from the “genuises” at Frys. I thought Macs were supposed to be more intelligent than that!

Well, I have a week here in San Diego to study the OS and fix it myself if. And if I can’t, then we’ll reinstall at the weekend.

Oh, and the trip cost me $100 as I was forced to buy a new keyboard and a new mouse for my mini.

I blogged earlier about the new iPod developments, and I was most excited about the new search feature, thinking that since this is all software it would be trivial to deploy it on all iPods, not just the new ones. Well, I am sure I am not wrong, I get new firmware pushed to my player all the time but Apple, in their finest capitalist moment, aren’t going to do it – only the brand new models will have the feature. Presumably they think I’m going to rush out and drop $300 on a new player but instead it has me more inclined to look elsewhere when my current battery dies.

I suppose that if CostCo has Christmas decorations for sale in September, I should not be surprised that the local stores have switched to “winter fashion” and its now impossible to buy a short-sleeved shirt anywhere. Only long sleeve lumberjack shirts and nice wool-knit sweaters for sale now. Don’t worry that the temps are still in the high 90s and, lets face it, aren’t going much below 90 even in the “winter”. This is Southern California and, dammit, we’ll wear scarves and down jackets even if its still 75F out, even if we do look stupid.

So… the Pope makes a remark in where he quotes a 14th Century Christian emperor who said the Prophet Muhammad had brought the world only “evil and inhuman” things, and Muslims get a little pissed. The Pope says he’s sorry they took it that way but doesn’t say he’s sorry he said it, and Muslims get a bit more pissed and start killing nuns, burning churches, the usual stuff. No “evil and inhuman” in that response, then.

As somebody put it on the BBC News website, if I was to go stand outside a Mosque shouting for the clerics to renounce the violence I’d probably be put in jail. But when its the other way around, its called exercising their right to free speech (and free hatred). Its a lot like immigration these days. The only people with rights are those who seek to change the way of life of everyone around them rather than fit in themselves: criticise and you’re an anti-fill in the blank, and intolerant. Surely, if you don’t like the (ahem) “white christian oppression” then go somewhere else. It really does seem pretty simple.

Anway, props to the Pope for sticking to his guns (and the way its going, he may need them for real).

Last night was the start of the third season of Dancing With the Stars. Despite some problems with the show, I was a big fan of the previous two seasons but last night’s show was just so boring. I think perhaps it just went on too long, or maybe the stars just weren’t very interesting or recognisable. The football star was better than last year’s but didn’t deserve any standing ovations; its only one show and already everyone is showing the same old biases. The judges are already bickering and, like with American Idol, it isn’t entertaining any more. There were some highlights: I loved the foxtrot by Vivica A. Fox and the ex-Miss USA contestant. Jerry Springer was fun to watch, and any time Karina Smirnoff is on screen is a good time by anyone’s standards.

Yep, the American football season in about to start and we haven’t yet got rid of that awful bore, the baseball season. Ugh, it gets so I’m scared to put on the TV lest I catch any of it and go into a boredom-induced coma.

Oh no, the east coast is suffering a heat index of 115F – call out the national guard, the world is ending. Out in Brawley, its been an actual 115F for a lot of the time, and will be again and stay that way before the summer is out. So do what we do, turn up the a/c, strip down to your undies, and lay in front of a fan.

P.S. Don’t tell me that its ok because it’s a “dry heat” 🙂