We’ve been urging Bones Wiley to update his website, as we know he’s been hard at work coming up with lyrics and new tunes now that he’s back in the United States. While there’s no update just yet, there’s a new video up on YouTube under the name FolkClouds. The video shows a dark figure hammering out a new tune, and for those in-the-know, that dark figure is Bones Wiley hisownself. Check it:

Here’s hoping Bones Wiley FolkClouds will keep up with the updates. Oh, and pick up some better lighting equipment.

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It seems like every few weeks, T-Mobile HotSpot subscribers are getting the shaft from AT&T at Starbucks, thanks to AT&T taking over the infrastructure for wireless Internet access at Starbucks locations. According to the transition, while AT&T will be taking over the hardware and maintenance of these hotspots, T-Mobile HotSpot subscribers should still have full access to wireless ‘net a access at Starbucks.

While we’ve had mostly smooth sailing with wireless Internet at Starbucks since the deal with AT&T was penned, every couple weeks there’s a major hiccup. In these instances, loading up a web-browser presents users with the typical Starbucks loading page, with a link at the top to access a T-Mobile HotSpot account. That link works too, but as soon as one’s T-Mobile phone number is entered in the username field, along with the associated password, the Internet connection is denied. This denial is illustrated in one of two ways:

1. A very unhelpful T-Mobile web page that says, “We’re sorry – proxied.” There’s a link to a service support FAQ that can’t be accessed thanks to the lack of Internet access, and a support number that takes a hour to get through to a HotSpot support tech.
2. An AT&T web page that kindly points out that the connection was rejected, prompting for a new username and password. Naturally, trying to input one’s T-Mobile HotSpot username/password into these fields leads to absolutely no success.

More frustrating is the fact that the two error results come up seemingly randomly, with perhaps a slight bias towards the AT&T error. Additionally, this problem seems to be occurring at Starbucks locations throughout San Francisco. After loading the initial login page and retrying to input one’s account information from scratch, there’s generally no change in status, but twice when we’ve encountered this error, it’s taken about an hour to resolve.

This hiccup may be linked to the transition of Starbucks’ wi-fi to AT&T’s able incompetent hands, but if that’s the case, one wouldn’t think this problem would come-and-go for months on end. Even the “proxied” error never came up before the AT&T transition announcement, so we’re adamant that AT&T is to blame. Thank the gods we’re not a subscriber of theirs anymore (SBC DSL FTL), and we’ll be quite angry if thee issues continue. If they do, bet your shorts that we’ll tether the living crap out of a 3G iPhone just to get AT&T back.

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I hate bicyclists in San Francisco. I’m not sure if I hate them more than San Francisco bus drivers, but I hate them nonetheless. As it is, I’m glad Aelel blogged about it on her new site, as I’ve been too lazy to throw something together about the topic myself. I’ll assume my comment to Aelel’s post sums up my feelings appropriately, however:

Not stopping for stop signs and red lights pisses me off to no end. As does blatant speed violations in which spandex-wearing pissants exceed the speed limit and often dodge between roads, parking lots, and sidewalks just to get to their destination faster. I will fucking kill you accidentally, you fucking spandex-wearing pissant, if you keep pulling that shit. And I will feel no remorse for cleansing the gene pool of your retarded self.

It’s time we educated bicyclists on what is acceptable behavior on the roads, else punish them in force. Either learn and subscribe to the laws of the road, or be banned from the road altogether. There is a reason a recent finding determined that approximately three-fourths of all bicycle-related accidents in San Francisco were the fault of, surprise surprise, the bicyclists themselves.

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It is highly amusing that the only thing coming to the XBox Live Marketplace of apparent note is programming that may have but a handful of people interested. This is not to say that programs for bi/homo/trans-sexual audiences, or country-music fanboys, doesn’t have a handful of people clapping their giddy hands, but for what is supposed to be more than a gaming machine, the XBox 360 isn’t enticing the mainstream, or even attempting to compete with the programming on AppleTV.

This isn’t even a matter of exclusivity, if networks like Comedy Central are playing both sides of the fence. Why, then, is Microsoft incapable of getting real programming on the 360, unless they’re intentionally holding off because they expect IPTV to cover all TV-watching on the 360 in the near future? Is the current TV show lineup on the 360 meant only to be a placeholder, until IPTV arrives at the end of the year? I argue that such a move may be too late, since by that time, Apple may have come to its senses and rolled out an appropriate amount of programming for the AppleTV, instead of its current, incomplete offerings.

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In a moment of pure geekery, Maxator managed to convince me to camp out for the Nintendo Wii. It may not have been a pure example of convincing per se, but the end result was that we both agreed to lend one another company in line at a local Target. By sheer chance, it turned out that the Target we arrived at was in a strip mall whose policy it was not to have people camping out, so we ultimately didn’t need our camping after all, and were issued numbered bracelets at 10pm. The idea was to return at 6am the following morning, get back in line, and be issued Wii according to our position in bracelet-designated line.

The event was a success, and time-in-line was approximately seven hours total. Admittedly, this reeks of dorkery, but it’s not like I had anything planned for Saturday night anyway that wasn’t accomplished in line. That is to say, Maxator and I ate unhealthy food and drank a lot of whiskey.

One of the miraculous things that occured during out wait in line was the transformation of a normal citizen into a god for the duration of our time in line. And by “god”, I mean “jackass”. I refer here to Mr. Plastic-Cuffs, the head security guard of the strip mall in which our Target was located.

This balding fellow took the time out of his otherwise empty schedule to issue silly orders such as “stay out of the road,” whike himself standing in the road. Mind you, at 9pm, no cars wanted to drive around Target anyway, unless you include Mr. Plastic-Cuff’s sidekick, the near-comatose Security Driver.

Security Driver would spend his time on duty driving around Target again and again. He didn’t really check for dangerous situations, but rather stared dumfoundedly at the line of people waiting in line for the Wii, which I gather was around 210 people, since this Target in particular had an inventory of 210 Wiis. (As an aside, this proves that PS3seerker actually had positive intelligence.)

I found it rather interesting that Security Driver and Mr. Plastic-Cuffs didn’t really have the equipment to deal with a potentially hostile situation. Though Mr. Plastic-Cuffs did have a pair of metal handcuffs in addition to his quick ties, he had no method for neutralizing anyone, unless he has a hidden affinity for the martial arts. Even then, I would discount his ability to issue a quick dirt-nap to a perpetrator, but then again, what do I know? Suffice to say, neither of these two skilled security guards carried a gun, nor mace.

In any case, the result of our waiting, in my case, was a Wii, an extra remote/nunchuk, and Zelda: Twilight Princess. Apparently, no retail outlet on earth has the composite cables necessary for HD-viewing. Unfortunate, but reasonably acceptable.

Over the past couple days, I’ve had the opportunity to play both Twilight Princess and Wii Sports, which came with the Wii. The former is a thoroughloy enjoyable game, even though I’ve found the bobber fishing to be positively retarded, and the lycanthropy to be overdone. In truth, the lycanthropy itself isn’t so bad, but rather it’s the accompaniment of a childish shadow-thing, and the overindulgence of TRON-imagery in what is supposed to be a fantasy world. Creative differences aside, however, Zelda is a delightful title whose control scheme is many times more enjoyable than the N64 titles that I briefly played.

Wii sports is pure fun. It’s not exactly a single-player title, but the more players who participate (and the more beer involved), the greater the fun becomes. As far as party titles go, Wii sports is top-notch, and probably the best tech-demo of the system Nintendo could have included. Speaking of which, the console gods have surely shined on us to finally include a game with a release system, unlike the past couple generations of systems.

I am also fondly awaiting a good first-person shooter for the Wii. Sadly, Red Steel has been getting horrible reviews, and Call of Duty 3 has not received the reviews I would have liked. Still, between the two, the latter sounds far more appealing, which is rather unfortunate, since I was hoping Red Steel would redefine console FPS games.

Overall, I am quite pleased with the Wii. The interface is solid, and doesn’t feel as cluttered as the X-Box 360 dashboard, or the PS3′s interface. Sadly, however, the Wii interface is relatively lacking in features, with the online component offline. Not only is the web browser not available yet, but the Internet news channels, and the weather forecasts, remain unavailable. Worse, neither will be active until at least December 20th. Why this feature isn’t available yet is beyond me; it is not difficult to get that kind of functionality out the door.

I’ve not downloaded any of the virtual console titles yet, but I am hoping that independent titles become available, akin to the X-Box Live Arcade games. As much fun as legacy titles are, I am not that interested in very old titles, as I either have those systems and games already, else didn’t buy them for a reason. However, I have to say that the Wii has a lot of potential. Hopefully, this potential will soon manifest in online games, a headset component, and rechargable controllers.

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