If I Send in a Penny, Can That Save Columbia House?

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

If I still had access to the storage unit—which I do not not, because rental companies enjoy it when one pays rent regularly, and I did not, so they auctioned the contents many years ago—if I still had access to that unit, I might be able to help out Columbia House.

The company that owns Columbia House, something called Pride Tree Holdings, Inc., announced today that it would be selling off what remains of the former music retailer at bankruptcy auction because it owns assets worth $2 million while it owes more than $63 million. (Pride Tree’s website is cheerfully ominous: it features a photo of an enormous, top-heavy, tree, a paragraph about the company, and a “Contact Us” button. And that is it.)

In that storage unit of memory there sit probably 100 CDs purchased from Columbia House for, oh, not a dime. Not even a thought of sending money, at least not a penny more than the penny I affixed to the cardboard order form I sent in every so often when I wanted to plump up my music collection.
Read More

We Miss You, Clawman Treefeller

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I wish you could have known Matt Coleman. Many did, but not enough. There was not enough time. “Matt’s heart was so big, it surrounded him,” one of his colleagues wrote.

I am grateful that I happen to think this about so many people that I have met, those clauses like “You ought to know so-and-so,” or “You should have met my friend, X,” but I am frustrated that I have not said it out loud often enough to the people I thought this. Matt already knew most of my friends, anyway, and the one friend I introduced him to, well, Matt asked her out.

A person’s end should not be what the world knows of them, though, and four years ago today, August 11, 2011, my friend Matt Coleman was murdered.
Read More

Windows Wishes: Some Windows 10 Solutions

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Last week, I installed the Windows 10 upgrade/update and wrote about it here and here. That second column, “Windows 10: Really Good, Horrible, or Both,” received more comments and suggestions than almost any other.

If it is not the most commented-on piece on this entire website, it is certainly the most commented-on piece from that day about Windows 10 and written by me.

I think I am ready to deliver a verdict.
Read More