What the fuck is wrong with these people?! This is a PSA from some group calling itself the National Organization for Marriage, and it would seem they hate teh gays. I think the storm clouds in the background added a nice “doomsday” touch, but maybe next time they could put supply-side Jesus on a velociraptor and add some flames of hell. You know–since teh gays will ultimately be responsible for the end of days. Christ. Whether or not two women or two men somewhere–even right next door to me (not that it’d happen here)–get married in absolutely no way affects my own life or my own marriage. I’m still just as much married to P. as I have been always, and I’m not going to suddenly wish I was married to a woman just because a couple of dykes want the same tax breaks (if one could call them that) that P. and I get for being legally married in the eyes of the government. Well, wait…women pick up their socks and don’t wear ratty bathrobes, right? Hmmm… Anyway, what the sweet fuck business is it of theirs as long as everyone involved is an adult capable of giving legal consent? Religion doesn’t “own” marriage anyway; it never did. Marriage began as a way to forge bonds between families, and in some places in the world, that’s still true. Non-Christians can get married. People who don’t even go to any church/synagogue/mosque/whatever can even get married. Hell, atheists can get married! Here, in the “Christian nation” (that’d be the one that can’t even manage to cough up Easter as a goddamned holiday), marriage is apparently something different. How do Adam and Steve threaten their freedom? They’re just as free to have a happy marriage or a miserable one, just as free to stay married or get a divorce, and just as free to teach their kids that their God hates fags. What is it with the Christian groups that just can’t stand the thought of anyone, anywhere…being happy? Just mind your own damned business and go read your book of fairy stories, you fucking loons! I respect your right to say anything you want, but Jesus, do you have to be so stupid about it? You make the rest of us look bad.

As long as I’m already half-pissed off…

Jesus H. Christ, I hate iTunes. Also Windows. I’d tried to update an app last night through the App Store, but the update failed, and it refused to even try again unless I did it through the iTunes store. I sighed, but since I didn’t have much of a choice and had to use iTunes anyway, I got the brilliant idea to do a full-on Apple-approved backup of my phone. I booted XP and fired up iTunes. I can’t remember the last time I used it, so of course it wanted to update to the latest version. Mine wasn’t that old, so I said “later” because I just wanted to make a backup, and I know that Windows can’t do much more than move the mouse pointer without a reboot, which I didn’t want to do. I connected the phone, fired up iTunes and checked everything I wanted to back up, then clicked Sync. I know it takes a while, so I just left it and took some laundry downstairs. Came back, checked and it’s copying iBird Plus. That’s a pretty big app, and transferring over USB, so I didn’t think too much about it, but ten minutes later, the progress bar hadn’t moved. I tried just closing iTunes, but it refused to close and just returned “not responding”, so I had to kill it. I waited a few minutes, then restarted iTunes to try again. This time, I sat and watched it. “Backing up Lisa’s iPhone”…fine, but then it started with the apps, and again, choked on iBird Plus, only this time, it didn’t even get as far as it had before. I left it for ten minutes, and again, the progress bar hadn’t moved at all, so again I had to kill it. Finally, I thought, “Fuck it–I’ll do the goddamned update and suffer the reboot,” so I downloaded an enormous update, letting it update anything it wanted to update. Installed, rebooted (fuck, I hate Windows), and tried again. Twelve minutes…progress bar hasn’t moved at all. I know iBird Plus is large–couple hundred MB–but twelve minutes, no HDD activity, and it hasn’t moved at all? That jus’ ain’t right. This time, when I tried to close it, it did at least tell me the sync would be cancelled, and it did close on its own rather than having to be killed, but then it wouldn’t start again at all. That left me no choice but to reboot. This time, iTunes starts, but doesn’t see my phone. Windows Explorer does, but not iTunes. Nothing has changed except iTunes. It sees my backed up apps, so it knows it had an iPhone at one point in time, but nope…doesn’t see it. I’m willing to do one more reboot, and if it works, I’ll just try to back up everything except iBird, and if that works, then I’ll either try iBird again, or (more likely) just say to hell with it. If rebooting doesn’t work and that POS iTunes still doesn’t see my phone, then I’ll just say to hell with it and thank a random deity that I don’t have to use Windows or iTunes more than once in a while. The phone will be fine until the OS update comes in June–I don’t fucking care anymore. Fuck you XP, fuck you Apple, and especially, fuck iTunes. I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself; I know that attempting to do anything more complicated than a video conference on MSN with Windows will just ruin my whole day. I know it, and still, I keep hoping.

Fantastic! This time, it does in fact, see my phone, but insists upon copying iBird from it to iTunes, which is exactly what made it choke in the first fucking place. I quit. If I somehow manage to fuck up iBird, I’ll just uninstall and re-download it with the goddamned phone. iTunes makes me wish I believed in a hell, so I could wish Apple would burn there. I hate that “our way or no way, so if it doesn’t work, you’re basically screwed unless you can come up with the cash for a Mac.” Fuck you. At this point, I’m not sure I’d take a brand new MBP if Steve Jobs himself turned up at my door to hand it to me personally. Still love my phone, though. 😉

Update: I finally did get it to sync, but the app that refused to update still wouldn’t even go through iTunes (said it couldn’t be verified or authorised or something), so I came up with my own, very simple solution…I deleted it. It wasn’t anything important enough to go through this much bullshit. I’m not fucking touching iTunes again until I have to upgrade the OS, and even then, I might wait for the jailbreak…depends upon whether the new features in 3.0 are all I need, or whether I need stuff that only jailbroken phones can do.