As most of the people that knows me know I have tinnitus – an old war injury from a Moby concert in 2001 (but to be fair I believe the front band Röyksopp is more to blame for that!). As a result my hearing in my right ear is slightly off. And on the friday before Christmas I got a really bad cold. So bad that I was tucked in bed all weekend which totally sucked since we were going to host the Christmas dinner for both our families and my wife had to work double-time to get things ready. But the worst part was that the cold resulted in my hearing in the right ear was almost gone! Went to the doctor and ofcourse he said “this is totally normal with a bad infection after a cold, it’ll sort itself out, come back if it isn’t better in … 3 months?”. Yeah, 3 months! Even though the hearing is slowly coming back I still hear the old peep from the tinnitus but multiplied by 10. Before I only heard the peep when it was quiet, like lying in bed trying to fall asleep. Now I hear it even when I’m driving the car with the radio on. Really annoying!
But the worst part is the side effects of not hearing what people are saying! Normally some things are easy to explain away but when talking to a person at work and you have to say “come again?” three times they don’t really think you have some ailment, they think you’re just plain stupid! Like when everyone thought an acquaintance’s father got really forgetful and might have come down with Altzheimers. When they finally made him go to the doctor it turns out he was almost deaf. It wasn’t that he forgot things, he simply didn’t hear what people were saying! So not hearing what people are saying isn’t as socially acceptable as the other things I suffer from unfortunately. If I’m in a meeting and I can’t sit still I can just say “sorry, my RLS is acting up” and everyone understands. Or someone doesn’t know what RLS is and you get into a discussion about that. Or when I can’t stop itching I just say “sorry, my eczema is acting up” and people understand. But after saying “what?” again and again I’m an idiot 🙁
Really hope it goes away and it goes back to normal cause this beep and people thinking I’m an idiot can drive a person insane!!
I doubt you’ve read this article : http://torrentfreak.com/uk-users-need-27-services-to-get-most-popular-films-report-finds-141208/ . What it basically says is “if you want to watch the most popular movies the legal way online you have to have 27 subscriptions”. It doesn’t say how much they cost but in my case that is irrelevant. Or you can have one subscription to a good Torrent/Usenet site and get it that way.
It’s the same issue with having physical purchased Blurays versus digtal media files. With the digital media file you simply double click and the movie starts. With buying a physical purchased Bluray you insert the disc and sit through adverts, commercial, trailers, discailmers, copyright notices, sound checks and animated menus that fly back and forth and then the movie actually starts!
That’s why filesharing won’t go away – because it’s a way more convinient way of consuming media today! I’ve started using more of online webservices like Netflix & Viasat which are great but still some issues. They don’t have deals with all studios so they can’t have all the movies & TV series. And the TV shows don’t have the latest episodes shown in the states. So as long as the entertainment industry is set in their ways and don’t want us in Sweden to see the latest episodes/TV series, as long as they have their distribution strategies and insist on showing us trailers, disclaimers and stuff on our discs when all we want is to watch a movie then filesharing won’t go away. I’d gladly pay $50-$100 per month for a service where I could see -> everything <-. But I don't want to pay $10 per service per month and still not get the latest stuff. That's what I think...
This week I’m on another 5 day Microsoft course. It’s a rather exciting one too – “Configuring Advanced Windows Server 2012 R2 Services”. Ok that doesn’t sound exciting but for me it actually is since it’s things that I deal with everyday. From NLB to failover clustering – it’s all good fun and usefull stuff. Because I have to admit, sometimes these courses do tend to talk about stuff you’ll never encounter in the real world!
But I am a bit confused. When we were doing the lab for Branch Caching I get a sense of deja vu and realised I know this stuff already thanks to the certification for the course prior to this one! I got so confused I even had to check my MCP status to make sure I didn’t accidentally write the “wrong” exam but nope. It seems MS are a bit confused what’s in the different courses. But I’m not complaining, can never get enough repition on this.
But I do wish MS would make it easier for us and actually license the virtual machines we use…