April 5^th, 2007

So, last week I had to use a certain tool to work on UI strings. More than that I'd rather not say. NDAs and all that.

Anyhow, the job I was performing (that I was "tasked with" as they say in the middle-management miasma) was so brain-meltingly pedestrian that I needed some further stimuli than just the work itself to keep from losing the last few fragments of my sanity.

Cue the music.

No, seriously, really: Cue the music ... for that is the best way I could come up with to alleviate my boredom from such a talent-insulting, life-clouding, spirit-crushing, mind-rotting job.

But the tool I was using was not the most stable or friendly of software, and it tended to crash under rather odd circumstances. What I was able to figure out was that some songs loaded into my Windows Media Player would cause the software I was using to crash. I don't understand why some songs did that and some songs didn't ... but, as Eeyore says, there it is. And when I tried those songs again (theorizing that maybe it was not the songs, but just "time for another crash") I discovered that I could reliably reproduce this behaviour!

So, naturally, I had to look next at what songs crashed my string review software. Nothing from Bach, nothing from Joni Mitchell. Oh, but "Waiting for my Man" by the Velvet Underground, when played in Windows Media Player would crash my reviewing / editing tool. That was interesting. And was it also an aesthetic statement? :) Frankly, I'm sure Lou Reed would be thrilled to hear that his singing disrupts software processes somewhere in the world (I know I would).

Partial list of songs that abuse the sensibilities of the tool:

• "Waiting For My Man" - Velvet Underground
• "What Goes On" - Velvet Underground
• "Run Like Hell" - Pink Floyd
• "Une Anée Sans Lumiere" by Arcade Fire
• "Girl U Want" - DEVO
• "It's Not Right" - DEVO
• "Tunnel O' Love" - DEVO

  (actually, it might be more than just these songs from the album, Freedom of Choice by DEVO, but I gave up even trying to listen to the album for all the crashes it was causing.)

• "L.A. Woman" - The Doors
• "When the Levee Breaks" - Led Zeppelin
• "Where Have all the Good People Gone?" - Sam Roberts

Note that it is specific songs, not all songs from a single album or of a certain length ... not just certain encoding rates, either. I couldn't find logic in it. For example, why did "L.A. Woman" make the string review tool crash, but not "Love Me Two Times", the previous song, or "Light My Fire", the next one? I don't get it.

I ask again: Was it perhaps some sort of critique of the songs themselves? Hmm ...

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