Parallels and the CD-ROM

While trying to burn an iTunes playlist to a CD today I was greeted with a very confusing error message.

"Disk burner is busy"

Huh, what are you talking about?

So I did the obvious. First I checked the mounted volumes list to see if I'd left something mounted (I tend to forget and leave DVDs in my laptop). No issues there. Then I tried the Eject Menu Extra (since I don't use an Apple keyboard and I like using F12 for other things) but the eject menu items was disabled. Disk Utility was no help either.

A quick search finally provided enough of a clue to figure out what was going on. This closed Apple support thread has the magic words (or word): Parallels.

Parallels was running in the background with a Ubuntu image I use for development purposes. Shutting down the VM and quitting Parallels restored my ability to operate the drive via the eject menu. So I started up Parallels again, changed the configuration to disable the CD-ROM and started up the VM.

I tried poking around the Parallels forums and then reading the manual but couldn't find anything that discussed taking over the CD operation from Mac OS, but that's certainly what's going on. It's a pretty nasty side effect.

Measure B

I wonder how many people know that the city of Thousand Oaks will be holding a special election on June 3, 2008 to vote on something called Measure B? Given the kind of weird way the file is linked, use this if you have problems.

I can't find anything online nor do I recall reading any reason for this modification to the general plan (perhaps someone is grumpy about the changes coming for the disaster at Erbes and Hillcrest?) but here's the summary from the document linked above:

The purpose of this initiative is to amend the General Plan and Municipal Code of Thousand Oaks to give the People the right to vote on any project that would result in unacceptable traffic congestion in our City.

We the people of the City of Thousand Oaks wish to maintain the character of our City and neighborhoods, and the quality of our lives. As citizens, we believe excess traffic flow beyond capacity and the resulting pollution are detrimental to our City. Traffic congestion, noise and air pollution, reduce our quality of life and the character of our City. As a result, the City must balance vehicular circulation requirements with aesthetic, pedestrian, bicycle and equestrian needs which affect our City. Too often, the City Council has approved development projects without appropriately considering the project’s impact on traffic congestion and its associated noise and air quality impacts.

It is time to take back some of the authority to approve large projects that will increase traffic congestion and generate more traffic and pollution. As citizens, we deserve a say in projects to ensure development interests do not overburden our City’s infrastructure and to maintain safe, efficient and adequate traffic circulation, based on existing and future capacity, for our City.

In enacting this measure, it is the intent of the People of Thousand Oaks to preserve acceptable traffic flows on our streets, preserve the character of the City, and limit the ability of City government to allow development projects that will decrease the “Level of Service” of our roads. The citizens hereby require all projects or other developments that would reduce the Level of Service (LOS) to worse than LOS C, prior to any approval of traffic mitigation, to be put to a vote in a Citywide election.

The city has done a lot of work to make more information available to us but they've got a long way to go.