HOWTO: Catch up on a pop culture phenom you missed

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Breaking Bad is racking up the praise at this point like nothing since the Wire, so I’ve been meaning to dive in — but, at this point, with four seasons in the can and another one in progress, that’s a rather daunting prospect. Especially when it’s exactly the sort of show (violent, bleak) that Mrs Heathen wants no part of. (We are sometimes accused of un-Americanism because we have only one TV.)

However, she’s out of town this weekend, and I have the first 2 seasons on DVD on loan from a friend. So, since Friday evening, I’ve watched the entire first season (only 7 episodes) plus over half (8 of 13) of the second season. It’s network TV, not pay cable, so each episode is only about 47 minutes, but that still means it’s been a pretty serious binge.

It started simply, which is fitting for a show about meth: I watched the first two episodes on Friday night before I stepped out for a party.

Then I went a little nuts. On Saturday, after lunch, I sat down and watched SEVEN EPISODES IN A ROW — over six hours of this bleak cancer-and-meth extravaganza. And I only quit because I wanted to go catch a band. Then, when I came home, I watched ANOTHER episode.

Today, I spent the bulk of the afternoon doing something really incredibly geeky with four other people, but I got back from that at about 7. It is now 11:47, and I’m still up because I have a con call with Abu Dhabi in 13 minutes. But for that con call, I’d still be watching Breaking Bad, but as it is it appears that I’ll have to content myself with only five episodes today.

For devoted fans, I’ll note that my latest episode is the 8th of season two, which is where we’re introduced to Bob Odenkirk‘s character, Saul Goodman. Who is AWESOME. Also awesome: the entire “wrong bald guy” sequence.

The show is not the equal of the Wire, but I can absolutely say that Bryan Cranston has deserved every nice thing said about him here — and more. The evolution of Walter from the first episode is astounding. His ability to channel that prior Walter becomes more and more unnerving as the choices he makes take him further and further into damnation.

Dept. of Amusing Statistics

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I noticed earlier that conference realignment in the SEC has put an end to one of my favorite little stats: the fact that Alabama has a winning record against everyone in the SEC. Missouri and Alabama have played only 3 times, but Mizzou took 2 of those games.

I’m sure this is something Alabama will fix as quickly as possible (they play this year, which should at least even it up, but scheduling voodoo is such that it may take a while to get the third win), but it got me wondering: Who has a winning record vs. Alabama nationwide?

Turns out, not many folks do. This site and this site both have lists, but (somewhat amazingly) the first one misses Texas, and therefore makes a completely incorrect assertion by stating nobody who’s played Bama more than six times comes out ahead. Texas was for years 7-0-1 vs the Tide; they didn’t lose to Bama until the 2009 title game, but they’re still way out ahead.

Anyway, if we look at both lists and eliminate the 1-game-wonders (as statistically meaningless) as well as any team that no longer exists or plays football, we’re left with ten squads:

  • Boston College: 3-1 – last game was 1984.
  • Louisiana Tech: 2-3 – last game was 1999.
  • Michigan: 1-2 – last game was 2000.
  • Missouri: 1-2 – last game was 1978.
  • Notre Dame: 1-5 – last game was 1987.
  • Oklahoma: 1-2-1 – last game was 2003.
  • Rice: 0-3 – last game was 1956.
  • Texas Christian: 2-3 – last game was 1975.
  • UCLA: 1-2 – last game was 2001
  • Texas: 1-7-1 – last game was the 2009 BCS title game played in 1/2010

Alabama opens against Michigan; there’s a strong potential to even up the record there. As I noted above, they will play and probably beat Missouri on October 13. I can’t imagine Alabama scheduling any of the rest of these teams on their own, so those records, like the Michigan record after this year’s game, will likely stay where they are until the Magic Bowl-Scheduling Hoodoo produces another matchup. But it’s a pleasantly short list that’s pleasantly short of meaningful gaps. Perhaps Alabama should slot in a rebuilding Texas and perennially hapless Irish to fix those two records after all.

Sic transit gloria mundi

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I’m sure Gore Vidal hated it when people called him gloria, though.

(Seriously, you don’t get many obituaries as much fun as this one. I’m sorry it omits the oft-repeated anecdote of Vidal’s response to Norman Mailer’s literally knocking him on his ass at some party: “Words fail Mailer again!”)

It begins.

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The preseason coaches’ poll is out. LSU’s on top, followed by Alabama, USC, Oklahoma, and Oregon in that order.

FIVE of the top ten are SEC squads.

If Alabama wins their opener against #8 Michigan, look for them to slide into the top spot. LSU’s slate is front-loaded with serious creampuffs; they don’t play in-conference until Auburn on September 22. They also don’t play a ranked nonconference team all season.

“Seven Minutes of Terror”

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You may have heard that we’re sending another probe to Mars.

Once it hits the Martian atmosphere, it takes about 7 minutes for it to reach the surface.

Mars is far enough away, though, that messages from the lander take 14 minutes. Ergo, by the time we hear it’s hit the atmosphere, it’s either safe on the ground or a pile of junk.

How they plan to manage this is a pretty interesting story. Make time for this today. (Here’s a permalink if you miss it today.)

The Curiosity rover will touch down — or crash horribly — on Monday, August 6, at 12:31 AM.

h/t: The Mant.

HEY CHIEF HEATHEN! Should I buy a new iPhone?

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No, not yet.

Apple is widely believe to be preparing the next iPhone (and let’s be clear; they won’t call it the iPhone 5 — expect it to be “the New iPhone” just like the 3rd iteration of the iPad was simply “the new iPad”) for release very soon. While they’re notoriously tricksy and secretive, we can divine at least a little information from past behavior and market realities.

Above all, Apple is certain to want at least one if not more than one new product in hand going into the holiday quarter.

Second, we can look at the release dates and “life spans” of the prior iPhone versions:

Iteration Release Date Duration to next version
Original iPhone 6/29/2007 378 days, or 1.04 years
iPhone 3G 7/11/2008 343 days, or 0.94 years
iPhone 3GS 6/19/2009 370 days, or 1.01 years
iPhone 4 6/24/2010 477 days, or 1.31 years
iPhone 4S 10/14/2011 ?

Third, we can pay attention, just a little, to the rumors circulating now about a September release date.

Many times when we try to read the tea leaves, we get conflicting information.

This is not one of those times:

  • To get product in the channel for Christmas, Apple needs to release the phone in September.
  • The past release cycles strongly suggest Apple prefers to have a model be top dog for about year — n.b. that the 4S release date was basically acknowledged as a delay, and that Apple’s intent was probably to release the 4S in the summer as well. The 4S’ release date? Just about a year ago.
  • Finally, actual rumors are circulating that also say “September.”

So, your iPhone is messing up? Battery life sucks? Screen broken? Tough it out. Mrs Heathen’s battery doesn’t last a whole day anymore, and my home button only works about half the time. But neither of us are at all interested in buying a 4S within 60 days of its replacement, and neither should you be.

I have never before wished AT ALL that I lived in Kansas

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Google is starting its fiber rollout; the initial neighborhoods in Kansas City will have the option of a ONE GIGABIT CONNECTION — both ways.

Existing telcos in whatever markets Google identifies are, I’m sure, absolutely shitting their pants. And should be.

It’s possible some of you aren’t nerdy enough to realize how big a deal this is. When I say “a gigabit connection,” I mean a connection that delivers 1 gigabit of bandwith per second. A gigabit is 1,000 megabits. A megabit is 1,000 kilobits.

Initial DSL connections were usually in the 400 to 600 kilobit range for download speeds. Now it’s usually 1 to 3 megabit download and about 0.7 megabit upload, unless you pay extra. Here at Heathen Central, we buy the fattest pipe UVerse will sell us, which is theoretically 18 megabits down and 3 up. In practice, it’s more like 12 to 15 down and 2 up, but that’s normal.

1,000 megabit both ways? Shit yes. Sign me. ATT can fuck off as soon as I get my hands on that, for sure. I mean, Google may be trending towards evil, but AT&T is the goddamn phone company. How much more evil can you be?

Import Update for Mac People

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No, not Mountain Lion, though that’s kinda important, too. (Official Heathen rec: As with all major upgrades, wait 3-6 months.)

I mean the all-important question of “what virtualization platform to use?” Since the Mac platform migrated to Intel chips, it’s been possible to run Windows in a window at near-native speeds — I do it all day, even running SQL Server and IIS locally, with completely acceptable performance.

Now, your needs probably aren’t my needs, but few are the Mac folks who don’t have at least one Windows holdout program they can’t quite get rid of. (For my mom, it’s Quicken, for example.)

Up to now, the go-to options for non-techie types were VMWare Fusion, from a company that made its name on server-side virtualization in high-availability environments, and something called Parallels (no link; keep reading for why) from a company that just does Mac desktop virtualization. For me, that choice has always been pretty simple: Go with the guys who do this for a living on lots of levels. They know more.

Historically, Parallels has performed pretty well, too, and in some areas was actually better than Fusion (mostly graphics, which doesn’t matter to me). I generally gave no recommendation to folks beyond “pick whichever of these is on sale.”

That’s no longer true. Parallels, apparently, actively spams its users with in-app advertisements and sales pitches, and makes it very difficult to turn this off, even to the point of deleting messages on their support forums sharing the command line (!) required to do so.

Their statement on the subject is a cornucopia of weasel-words and bullshit:

We use in-product notifications to share several types of information with our customers. First, and most importantly, we share information about product updates which are generally related to compatibility with OS X, new features and product enhancements. Second, we occasionally share special offers from Parallels or other third party companies who provide special deals for our customers. Many of our customers rely on the information about product updates and appreciate the special deals for products that are of interest to them.

Individual notifications can be turned off by clicking the “don’t show this again” button. However, because customers need to receive important product information, there is not a mechanism for customers to completely disable notifications.

This, of course, is a lie; there IS a terminal command you can issue to disable it. That line is:

defaults write com.parallels.Parallels\ Desktop ProductPromo.ForcePromoOff -bool YES

Parallels isn’t shareware or freeware. It costs real money — typically about the same as Fusion, which is nearly a hundred bucks. It’s absolutely inexcusable that they’re insisting on this spamming behavior, and doubling down by (first) lying about the fact that it CAN be disabled and (second) trying to keep people from discovering this truth.

Do not buy Parallels. Send your dollars to VMWare. They’ve had plenty of time to address this; it’s clear this behavior is deliberate, and that they have no intentions of changing. Vote with your money.

(h/t: Fireball.)

Somehow, I missed this AWESOME FACT

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In this great behind-the-scenes short from the Hobbit, I discovered that Sylvester McCoy is in the film as Radagast, another of the wizards, i.e. a peer of Gandalf.

McCoy is of course already immortal in fandom as the 7th incarnation of the Doctor back in the 80s; his tenure — the 24th, 25th, and 26th seasons — closed out the original TV series, though he went on to do a TV movie in 1996.

(Giant Nerd Alert: Note that, in Tolkein, wizards are not human beings. They’re closer to angels or demigods.)

Surprise, surprise: Cops abuse the powerless

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I for one am shocked — shocked! — to learn that the Border Patrol behaves like this.

Oh, wait. No, I’m not.

Again, the only that that will produce greater accountability in law enforcement is civil and criminal liability for the actual officers. The problem with CBP is even bigger, since their victims are essentially powerless, which has clearly led to a situation where they feel they can get away with anything they want — with predictable consequences.