I prefer instant gratification; I hate waiting for things. Every day, I check my online banking records to see if my payment to Coda Music has been processed, so that I'll know when I can expect Finale to arrive. I wish I'd bought tracking when I sent in my master Rhapsody disk, so I could know whether it had arrived in Minnesota yet.

On the positive side, the longer it takes, the more likely my chances of being able to get a free upgrade to the new version of Finale when it comes out, purportedly within a month or two.

The following is the warning label for a product called Liquid Leaf:

WARNING: CONTAINS XYLENE AND SOLVENT YELLOW 14, A CHEMICAL KNOWN TO THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO CAUSE CANCER. AVOID BREATHING VAPORS. KEEP AWAY FROM HEAT, SPARKS AND OPEN FLAME. USE ONLY WITH ADEQUATE VENTILATION. MAY CAUSE CELL DAMAGE. MAY CAUSE RESPIRATORY TRACT IRRITATION. MAY CAUSE NUMBNESS OR WEAKNESS IN THE EXTREMITIES. EXPOSURE MAY CAUSE DAMAGE TO YOUR LIVER OR KIDNEYS. FOR FURTHER HEALTH INFORMATION, CONTACT A POISON CONTROL CENTER. When using, wear impermeable protective gloves. Wear NIOSH certified respirator with appropriate cartridge. Keep away from eyes. Use exhaust fan to assure adequate cross-ventilation. Do not use or mix with strong oxidizing agents, strong acids, strong bases or selected amines. Wash hands immediately after use. Keep container tightly closed. Store in well ventilated area. Do not store or use near heat, sparks or flame. FIRST AID: If eye contact occurs, rinse immediately with water, then flush with tap water for 15 minutes. If skin contact occurs, wash with soap and water for 5 minutes. If swallowed, get prompt medical attention. If symptoms occur, move to fresh air. If symptoms persist, see a physician. KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN.

The thing is, real goldleafing isn't that difficult — why anyone would use something this toxic just to save a little work is beyond me.

While browsing around today, I came across a link which I thought was a joke. Apparently, though, it's quite serious. Now, there are plenty of Christian magazines out there. And there are quite a few computing magazines, as well. But Christian Computing Magazine?!

What, is there a danger of going to Hell if you read one of those secular computing magazines? Could reading Dr. Dobbs' Journal leave believers earthbound during the Rapture?* Would St. Peter really give someone the boot for reading Byte? Is Wired the tool of Satan?

Is there actually a need for a Christian computing magazine? Specialization is fine, but really, there's just a point where it crosses over into ridiculousness.

* Speaking of which, there's no bumper sticker that I find quite as annoying as the one that reads: "Warning: in case of Rapture, this car will become unmanned." That sounds an awful lot like the sin of Pride to me. Then again, I also get annoyed at the one that reads "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven." There's nothing quite like the smugness of a "Christian" who's ignorant of the teachings of his own religion.

The series finale of The X-Files was a major disappointment. I was shocked by how amateurish the script was, even more so because it was written by Chris Carter.

For starters, they wasted more than half of it on a synopsis of the previous nine years. I was afraid it was going to turn into a clip show, but fortunately it wasn't quite that bad.

The "cross-examination" of Mulder's witnesses was a joke. The prosecutor spent the entire time crowing over the fact that they could produce no evidence — but when mind-reading Gibson Praise appeared, he simply claimed without demonstration that he could read minds, and that one of the men sitting in judgement against Mulder was an alien. They didn't ask him to prove the veracity of his claims (by, say, having him tell them what they were thinking).

Likewise, this prosecutor was able to shoot down most of the witnesses with a single pithy statement, apparently rendering them unable to defend their testimony or explain why they had had (for example) a change of heart.

The writing for and about Deputy Director Kersh was utterly pathetic. The man who spent years trying to destroy Fox Mulder balks at ensuring a "guilty" verdict against him? After his entire history of betrayal, the "good guys" simply trusted him, uttering only a token "what's he doing here?" before accepting his help?

The ending was utterly anticlimactic; obviously, the entire episode was merely a setup for one or more movies. And for all the hype that the finale would tie up all the loose ends, there's still that alien hiding out in the Rolling Hills nuclear reactor. And Xena is also out there somewhere.

I was disappointed that John Doggett and Monica Reyes were as marginalized as they were. Sure, Mulder was one of the show's two central characters for the lion's share of its run, but John Doggett is just more interesting (and much more three-dimensional) as a character than Fox Mulder (and quite frankly, I think Robert Patrick is a better actor than Duchovny).

Oh well, there's always the movies.

Two weeks ago, I ordered an instrument from Mars Music. The store local to me didn't have it in stock, so they were going to transfer one from another store which did have it. The salesman — excuse me, the musician told me it would take about a week to come in, and they'd give me a call when it arrived.

After a week, I hadn't heard anything, so I gave a call. It hadn't come in yet, so I was told to call back on Friday. On Friday, the guy I was dealing with wasn't in, so another guy told me he'd research it for me. He couldn't find anything out about it, so he promised he'd have the first guy give me a call on Saturday.

Well, Saturday rolled around and no call came. Nothing on Sunday. So I called the store on Monday. The guy "in the know" wasn't in again, so they told me he'd be back in on Wednesday.

So I called today, and finally reached him. "Oh yeah," he said, "I was supposed to look into that." He took my name and phone number (which I'd already given them three times over the past two weeks), and eventually called me back.

Apparently, when the stockroom people at the other store pulled the instrument and looked in the box, they discovered that it was damaged. They had a second, undamaged one in stock, but they weren't sure whether or not to send it. Perhaps they imagined that I had my heart set on an instrument with a particular serial number, and would reject an identical, undamaged one with a different number. Or perhaps they were simply smoking crack. Anyway, they purportedly sent an email to the general manager at the store I was dealing with, who, I am told, neglected to pass the question on to the guy who was handling my order. To top things off, they don't have a box for the undamaged instrument (and apparently they can't just ship it in the box the damaged one was in).

It'll probably be another week before it arrives. This is really starting to piss me off.

After all the trouble I'd had with my order from Mars, I decided to cancel the order and just see what the local store had in stock. I ended up paying a little more than I would have for the one I'd ordered, but I got a really good deal, and ended up with a much better instrument as well.

I had ordered a Squier P-Bass Special 5-string electric bass guitar — a cheap entry-level instrument. I walked away with an ESP LTD B-205 5-string instead, which I got at a shockingly low price because (a) the model had been discontinued, and (b) it was a floor display model, and they couldn't find the box, the warranty registration card, or anything else that had come with it.

From reading reviews, it's apparently considered a lighter-weight bass. My left shoulder finds that surprising, but since it doesn't have much experience with supporting bass guitars, I'm not paying much attention to its opinion.