Month: May 2005

Apple faces lesbian discrimination lawsuit

Apple has been sued by a former employee for alleged discrimination. Shaune Patterson says that she was wrongfully terminated from the company because she was a Lesbian. Formerly employed by Apple as a human resources compensation consultant, she has filed suite in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. The amended complaint, filed on May 16, 2005, alleges that Shaune Patterson was suspended for one month and then subsequently wrongfully terminated from her position, after she complained that her white counterparts, who were junior to her, were making higher salaries than she was. Patterson alleges that the suspension came one day after she complained of racial discrimination.

Patterson has amended her complaint to include claims of sexual orientation and genetic characteristic discrimination. Prior to her one-month suspension, Patterson alleges that one of Apple’s managers wrote a memo describing her as a “rather obese-sized black lesbian.” According to Patterson’s attorney, Waukeen McCoy, “Apple discounted my client’s achievements, choosing to base the decision to discipline not on her performance, but rather on her size, race, and sexual orientation.” McCoy was the lead plaintiffs’ attorney in one of the largest U.S. History racial discrimination suit, Carroll v. Interstate Brands Corporation, which rendered a verdict for $133 million in August of 2000.

WB Studio Tour

So Friday after I got off work I went and picked up Andrew at 7:40am. We went to Earls to eat breakfast and then went up to the WB Studios in Burbank.

First of all, it took us over an HOUR to drive 33 miles! Which is insane! Fucking LA traffic. Either way we had a really good time doing it.

We got there, and it was so HUGE and so much fun. We got to see all these different sets, including the set they are going to be filming RENT on in a few weeks. Sadly since everything is on hiatus, we didn’t get to see any stars. But that did mean we got to go INTO Luke’s diner, Lorelai’s House… Which also happens to be Suki’s (sp?) house. We got to stand in the gazeboo in the park, and see the dance studio and Star’s hollow High school. OMG, it was SO MUCH FUN!

Then, I told the guy how I liked the West Wing. So we got to go there too and go through the West Wing set! I was surprised at how filthy it was. I mean it always looks so clean and shit on screen, but it was a mess! It was so cool though to see the Press room, and all that. I really wanted to see the Oval Office, but it was in an area that he said was too dark to walk down. 🙁

Anyways, we got done with that at like 12:30 or so, and then drove back home. Traffic was just as bad coming home as it was getting there, so it took us another hour.

Dropped Andrew off at Chapman and then I came home and went to bed. Spelt tell 8ish when I went to the UPS place and picked up some packages, since I missed the delivery. I’m so happy now cause I have my QaF season 4, Dick Van Dyke, and MST3K. 🙂 Plus my two new sets of sheets! Woot.

Worked after that, and sadly things failed, so I had to track down a developer. The main one I was supposed to call was gone, and so I tried a few others with his suggestion. Thankfully Eric was around and could help… So then I started my stuff back up again. Only for it to fail again around 1 am. By that time it was too late to do anything about it, so I had to just give up for the night. I did a few other things and then went to bed about 3am.

Now here it is 8am and I’m back up working again. Eric’s online and trying to fix the problem. Yay.

I’m really happy about hanging out with Andrew again. It’s been just like old times, and I forgot how nice it was to have someone to talk to… With JonJon if he and I had gone all the way to Burbank, the whole 2 hours drive would have been him blasting his radio… With Andrew we talked all the way there and all the way back about just random stuff. It was really nice. 🙂

I’m supposed to go up there for the graduation. But I’m not sure if I will or not. We’ll have to see how long I have to stay up working on this work stuff. And if I can get enough sleep. But I am going to go up later and hopefully we can go to see StarWars. YAY!

Well laters.

NAS — Decided.

I decided to go with the Buffalo TerraStation It’s $929 at one place, and you get 750Gig’s of usuable RAID5 space (1 Terrabyte with striping). And it’s hardware RAID. THe only thing I don’t like about it is that you have to take the damn thing all the way apart to change a drive. I wish it had a module loader like most. But that’s what you get when you don’t have a budget for an Enterprise solution.

The thing I really like is that you can add up to 4 more drives via USB2. And from my understanding they can be used as part of the RAID!

Now I’m going to update my desktop with LInux and reformat the drives. I still need to buy a new tuner card with more onboard encoding capacity, and a better graphics card to output to my HDTV. Then I can finially have my PVR that I want. I was thinking about maybe installing the Windows Media CEnter version (we have a copy here at work that I could use) just to see how it works. I think it’d be fun. 🙂 But MythTV is the way to go.

I really can’t wait to do all this, but I feel SO BAD about dropping all this money on technology. Gah, why must I be such a tightwad.

Hung out with Andrew again tonight. It was lots of fun. Just like old times. We went to Target, and watched Golden Girls and had a jolly old time. Though I guess lots of people are talking bad about my hanging out with him again… Oh well… They are right to think bad about me.

Next weekend is also a three day weekend for me. I want to go on a trip somewhere, but I just don’t know where. Nor do I know who I’d go with. 🙁 Anyone up for a road trip?

Later.

NAS not NOS!

I’ve decided I want to build my own NAS…. I mean WHO WOULDN’T want 800 Gig’s of RAID 5 hard drive space?

It’s pretty much means no chance of loosing data. After seeing andrew loose his twice in as many weeks. I dont want to do that.

I currently have an 80 gig and a 160 gig full of shit at home. It’s also be nice to use so that I can start running MythTV again. Currently I don’t have the room on my computer to store even an hour of TV. Blah. AND the best part is that I could backup my laptop daily to it.

I have found Project UDAT. That one will cost me about $1500 to build myself. Which could be fun. But there are a few parts that I would be nervous about building myself… “Drilling out the rivets”

I also found Fastora NAS Which is $1,000 pre-build. But it doesn’t come with drives, and it’s only a 4 bay model. Which means I’d only get 600 Gigs.

On this topic. It always amazes me how quickly one can fill a big hard drive. I just bought my 160 a few months ago (LIke around christmas) and it’s already full… I never thought I’d be able to fill it! And now that it’s full and all my other drives. I really want to get a good backup solution. Currently I have a single copy of most of it, and a dual copy of the things that really matter. My laptop gets synced to my iPod whnever I remember to do it….

I really can’t wait tell Apple enables the iPodHome. That way I can just have my Home directory mirrored to my iPod, much like you do with a windows domain (Check in/out). Though I have to delete about another 2 gigs off my iPod to fit my entire home directory.

Grrr.

Where are our Terrabyte drives?!

Parents Are Coming

So my PU’s are coming to town… HELP ME PEOPLE! What should I do with them? I figure one day in Laguna Beach…. And I’d like to take my mom to South Coast. But I dunno what they’d both like to do. So Idea’s for old people please! I think I’ll stop at the airport one day or some random hotel and see if I can get some brochures for things to do!

Gilmore girls was crazy tonight! I’m so mad at them for ending it the way they did! I can’t wait tell next season to find out what the hell the answer is! OMG. I’m going to have a heart attack! I hate this. Gilmore people, GET TO WORK AND MAKE MORE SHOWS. I’m going to be so sad when this show goes off the air. 🙁

Nothing much else to update about today. I spent a little over an hour talking to Andrew on the phone today. That was good to get to talk to him again. I really missed talking to him every night.

People here at work didn’t send me the info that I needed to do my work tonight… So I’m going to work on cleaning up some code that I wrote a long time ago. Blah.

Also WP1.5.1 is out. Undecided about if I should update or not. Seems like too much work. Blah.

Laters all.