You know, reading this post of Matt's and reflecting some more about my own post (and what Heather said in comments), I've begun to think that this kind of talk is counterproductive. Sure, it's fun to belittle the Tom-Toms of the world, but it's really just egotism. And there's no point in getting into a hipster pissing contest: despite impressive recent gains in indie cred among the HTML-authoring set, our cause would still be hopeless. I've got a feeling the cool kids are already spending their evenings on H Street. It's no use trying to keep up with the Spike Jonzes.

But that's alright. All that you and I really want is a good pint at a good price with good friends — and not to have to take a cab to do so. That goal can be achieved without constantly reminding everyone how much Mr. Days sucks. Because here's the problem: nobody likes being told their preferred watering hole is lame. Push those people far enough and they'll start looking for cooler pastures.

Sure, it won't happen right away. And sure, it won't be all of them. It'll start with the borderline cases — the guys and girls who don't really like their jobs on the hill. The ones who kind of wish they'd double majored in English, too, instead of just Econ. The ones who in the deepest, most secret corners of their hearts feel that yes, there is a limit to the number of live versions of "Ants Marching" that a person ought to have on their iPod. The kids who keep meaning to put some time into updating their Late Night Shots profiles, but just never seem to get around to it. These are not bad people. They could be saved.

But that's a risk we can't afford. This is a sinking-sub type of situation: we have to close the airlock or we could lose the whole ship. I know there are a lot of good people on the other side of that door, but we can't take the chance. They'd show up; and stop wearing clothes prominently featuring the letters A and F on the outside; and fall into line, larding their mp3 players with the Pitchfork-approved pantheon, just like we all did. And for a while everything would be great.

But then kickball season would end, and their friends would start asking why they never see them anymore, dawg? They would say they should totally hang out sometime. They would say alright, why don't we come to your 'hood?

And then they would begin to arrive. The guys who gave up i-banking jobs to open mail for Frist because they wanted a chance to "make a difference" before business school. The girls who email old friends to ask "how they're all doing, especially the ones who are recently married". And then it's all over. Beer prices go up. Lines form outside. Dudes start getting into fights with other dudes. Finally, one dark, dark day, the guy at the door won't let you in because you're wearing sneakers.

I'm not trying to imply that the readership of this site, or even Matt's site, is large enough to cause a meaningful shift in the migratory habits of the urban collarpopper. But every little bit counts. So let's live and let live. Some people prefer cheap dive bars filled with t-shirts and PBR; others prefer clubs full of eighties cover bands and guys with names like "Chet" or "the third". This is America, and you're free to chose. There's no need to talk trash about other people's preferences — at least not with sufficient specificity to drive them away from those preferences and into ours.

And on that note, have you guys heard about this new place, Smith something or other? I think the second word starts with a P. Anyway, I hear it's, like, totally underground or something.

I'm sure KAC is a perfectly nice person, but her advice on nightspots for meeting new people reads like my personal anti-manifesto. To be fair, I suppose I am pretty bad at making new acquaintances when I'm out for the evening.

But that doesn't change how much the Front Page sucks. Between the crowd and the taco bar, it provides more ways to catch hepatitis than any other venue in the city.

However, there is one good piece of advice buried in the entry:

Into java? Meet someone online, and then go on a coffee date, compliments of Yahoo! personals and Starbucks.

Suggested icebreakers: was Sun's decision to open-source the language too little, too late? Is there a compelling reason not to switch to C#? How big does your web app really have to be to justify the hassle of JSP development?

(By the way, Kelly, the J's supposed to be capitalized.)

It turns out that the replacement Sidekick I got a few weeks ago has a much better camera than the old one. Not resolution-wise, mind you, just not-having-a-purple-tinge-on-one-side-wise. Of course, crappiness wouldn't have stopped me from foisting these shots on an unsuspecting world. But now, even if you find them boring, they're undeniably not that purple.

First, barbeque-sauce-shopping: harder than you'd think.

Canadian Club? Are you sure that isn't a brand of terrible whiskey bought by high school kids? Perhaps this sauce is a horrifying byproduct of the distillation process. I just don't know. But Canada seems to be asking for us to put our BBQ trust in them. I'm sorry guys, but you haven't earned it. Nobody talks about Quebec-style ribs.

I can imagine the meeting behind this label perfectly:

Person A: We need to sell people on the great taste our new recipe.
Person B: Yeah, but I'm worried about losing people who like the taste the way it is.
Person A: Hmm. Yeah. Seems like we're kind of at odds here.

Six dry-erase-fume-filled hours later

Person B: ... So yeah, I totally think we can say that.
Person A: Yeah, when you think about it, flavor and taste are really two distinct things.
Person B: Right.
Person A: Right. Totally. Okay, great, let's get Person C to do some comps.

"Celebrity Cleaning"? "By Referral Only"? I'm mystified. What, do you think they show up in, like, costumes? I'm thinking it's like in L.A. Confidential, but with mops. Huh. I honestly don't know what celebrity I'd most like to have clean my windows. Seems like the kind of question one should have an answer for.

The switch to OS X has been occasionally bumpy, but overall I'm extremely happy to have made it. Generally whatever problem I've had has turned out to be due to my own ignorance. Whenever I ran into an annoyance, helpful Mac gurus with the gentle eyes of true belief would swoop in, diagnose my problem, and help me get past it. There are still things I don't like — control-clicking, non-standard keyboard shortcuts, Expose's occasional unpredictability — but overall I'm very pleased with it. After yesterday's news, I would unconditionally recommend Apple notebooks to anyone with enough money to buy one.

But last night I finally came across a bug that really does seem serious and inexcusable. Maybe someone will point out what I did wrong. But I have my doubts about this one being my fault.

I was trying to burn a CD. In OS X you do this through a pleasantly-intuitive mechanism called a Burn Folder. You create one and drag files into it. OS X makes shortcuts to the original file in the burn folder rather than copying them in their entirety. When you've got your disc properly laid out, you press a little "Burn" button. It's nice.

Except here's the thing: if you delete a shortcut from the burn folder, it deletes the original file. Perhaps there's a way to suppress this behavior, but I couldn't find it. And it's definitely the default action. This was particularly horrifying to me because I was working off of Charles and my mp3 collection, which currently resides on a removable USB hard drive and nowhere else (I haven't had a chance to move it back to the Linux machine since rebuilding it). It took me a little while to realize what was going on, and when I did, the Undo function would only repair the most recent deletion.

Fortunately the damage wasn't too extensive, and I could rescue everything from the trash can. But did Apple really never consider the idea that someone would want to copy some top-level directory to a burn folder, then prune its subdirectories? A shortcut is a shortcut, guys. Check out "man ln" — it's good stuff! More importantly, have a look at how deleting a shortcut/symlink works in every other situation on every popular OS.

I like you, Apple, but if this is your way of getting me to repurchase all of my music from iTunes I'm going to be pissed.