The Macalope

The Macalope is pleased to announce that starting immediately, he’ll be blogging for CNET.

“Well, I know you cant work in fast food all your life
But dont sign that paper tonight,” she said,
But its too late.

This is a great opportunity for this mythical beast to gain a higher profile and, well, start making a little scratch for his troubles. According to the agreement, CNET bloggers retain responsibility for their content so you should not suddenly start seeing a bunch of puff pieces about how awesome companies that just happen to be CNET advertisers are.

Although, by the way, they are really, really awesome.

Yeah, I dont remember what I read,
I dont remember what they said,
I guess it doesnt matter,
I guess it doesnt matter anymore

But, even so, why would you like this? What do you, the Macalope’s lithesome yet virile reader, get out of it?

For starters, the fact that the horny one is now getting paid something reasonably resembling his worth (no offense to the fine folks at Rogue Amoeba who took a chance on a relatively untested mythical creature on their own initiative) means he has an incentive to write more.

Sell out, with me, oh yeah, sell out, with me tonight
Record company’s gonna give me lots of money and
Everythings gonna be all right

Also, there is, you’ll have to admit, a certain poetic irony in the Macalope blogging for the company that owns the company that George Ou blogs for.

What does that mean for this site vis-á-vis the new blog? Well, the Macalope’s not sure yet. He suggests continuing to subscribe to this feed as it may become the Macalope “after dark” as it were — a place to post those posts CNET might think are a little “too blue”.

No more flippin’ burgers puttin on my silly hat you know
I dont want that no more,
I didnt ask when we get paid, I quit my day job anyway,
I guess it doesnt matter, I guess it doesnt matter anymore

One piece of bad news is that CNET does not currently provide full RSS feeds. They provide the first 100 characters which should at least take care of the primary complaint the Macalope heard which was having to click through for short posts. Also, it’s the Macalope’s understanding that they’re not completely wedded to this structure so if you’d rather see full feeds with ads or full feed without ads or full feeds without ads and a free beverage, let them know.

I dont think itll be so bad
I know it wont be so bad
‘Cause the man said thats the way it is
And the man said it dont get better than this, no, no, no

Again, it’s the Macalope’s sincere hope that his good fortune is your good fortune.

Onward and upward.

Lyrics to “Sell Out” by Reel Big Fish.

Bad audio here.

Good text updates here.

The Apple Store is down, by the way.

UPDATE: Looks like the Macalope was wrong about Safari (although he did give it a 50-50 shot). No new hardware was announced but something must be up because the Store is still down. Speed bumps?

Just finished recording this week’s MacBreak Weekly which was a blast. Probably won’t be up until tomorrow, though.

The Macalope is very pleased that he was able to work in the phrase “strangely homoerotic”, but Merlin’s description of the disturbing Jerry Lewis movie that never got made is going to keep him up all night.

The Macalope has received many, many requests for full RSS feeds. He has heard your cries and at long last he is able to say “Let them eat text!”

With this post, the RSS feed should contain the entire text of the post.

The Macalope is also working on putting some hopefully tasteful and Mac-oriented (is that redundant?) text ads into the feed (there’s no such thing as a free lunch) so if they don’t appear with this post, they should appear soon.

Oh, and the links have been changed to more readable descriptive links (but the old ones should still work).

The Macalope will likely be laying low this week. Please talk amongst yourselves.

The iPod is not the first in-car system to feature music that can’t be played on another device.

That limited availability – which also meant you could only listen to artists under contract with Columbia – was part of the problem with the option, which died at the end of the model year.

Well, the Macalope probably can’t get away without putting some of his velvety hide in the game, so here goes.

• Beatles-themed iPod.
• iWork spreadsheet.
• Little hand-held computery phone thing.
• Tiger Leopard (Drunk fauns, indeed. These were Mexican fauns with tequila.) to be delivered earlier than expected, possibly right after the keynote.

And to raise the ante, something he hasn’t seen reported anywhere else.

• Some large announcement for the education market that leverages wireless technology.

The Macalope didn’t entirely pull that one out of his rump, but it’s not based on a whole lot.

21 hours.

It’s almost 2007 for crying out loud!

At any rate, Bill Bumgarner has tagged the Macalope (apparently a week ago) with the “Five things you don’t know about me” thing.

This may have been last Friday’s five but according to iCal it’s Friday again, so let it ride!

1. While it’s a pain in the ass to type with hooves, it does mean that the Macalope is immune to carpal tunnel syndrome, as his “forearms” are made up with several phalanx bones that…

   Well, it’s complicated. Suffice it to say you won’t be seeing the Macalope wearing one of those wrist thingies.

2. The Macalope once nailed Carly Fiorina.

   It was nothing to write home about.

3. The Mac the Macalope primarily uses is an SE/30, but it’s a mythical SE/30 that can run OS X.

4. The Macalope brews his own beer using a recipe taught to him by Dionysus himself. The secret ingredient? The dewy nectar that forms on Scarlett Johansson’s brow when she does hot yoga.

   Which is redundant as any yoga Ms. Johansson does is, by definition, hot yoga.

5. Favorite Dr. Seuss character: Horton.

   You’d be surprised at how many people say Marvin K. Mooney. It’s weird.

Happy New Year!

Wow, there’s been quite a bit of general silliness in the breathless reporting of Apple’s options issues in the past 48 hours.

Here’s a hapless ZDNet headline writer apparently mistakenly thinking the Financial Times had broken the news that Jobs had traded his options in (that’s been know for years).

Meanwhile Michael Gartenberg at Jupiter Research agreed to be interviewed on the subject under the condition he not be asked for a legal opinion or how these reports would affect Apple’s share price.

Guess what the first two questions were.

Many, many stories said that Apple’s board had not approved the granting of the options. That’s actually not known. The Financial Times report appears to be saying that the options were reported as having been approved at a board meeting that either didn’t happen or where the options were not discussed. It’s still possible that the individual board members were aware of the grant and approved it. Apple still would have violated the law, but it changes the nature of the intent.

The San Jose Mercury News has all kinds of wild speculation from legal experts on how the news of the forged documents points to criminal intent and how Steve Jobs is a great target for a prosecutor “eager to show that no executive is above the law.”

Hey, even the Macalope got in on it, speculating that the Republican SEC chairman would be tempted to go after Apple because Gore is on the board.

Ha-ha! What an idiot!

Heyyy, wait a minute…

It’s been a few days since the Macalope’s last post, so he thought he’d test the ol’ blog and make sure it’s still working.

The Macalope wishes he could post all the time, but his day job is really demanding.

What is the Macalope’s day job?

Why, delivering Macs and iPods to all the good little boys and girls throughout the world.

A lot of people think that’s done by Airborne Express or FedEx. That’s only because the Macalope works in strange and wondrous ways. Anyone who’s eagerly awaited the delivery of a new PowerBook or iMac or video iPod knows there are deep magical and spiritual forces at work, forces far beyond the ken of some guy in a brown shirt and shorts with a wireless punch pad and a name tag that says “Larry.”

But it’s hard work figuring out of someone deserves an Apple product or not. Just the other day, for example, you may have read that the Macalope was forced to deliver a bar of soap instead of an iPod. This was, quite simply, because the buyer was being a bit of a pill around his friends and family. It was a tough call, but someone’s got to make it.

Anyway, hopefully someone will post something stupid tomorrow and the Macalope will have something to write about. Keep your fingers crossed!