Clowns = yipes

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I knew it!! I've always known it!!!

The Obligatory Year End List, Part 2

I was going through my music catalog and realized my last post I missed some gems from last year. Iron & Wine - The Shepard's Dog is another disc I found myself playing over and over this year. If you don't know them, check it out. I can't find a song I don't like on it. Eddie Vedder released the soundtrack to Into The Wild, and if you like the melodic side of Pearljam, you'll like this disk. The radio hit Hard Sun is the best, but it's solid throughout.

I learned about Spoon this year with Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, and I'm hooked. My favorites are The Underdog, You Got Yr Cherry Bomb and Don't Make Me a Target.

Best album-I've-heard-multiple-great-songs-from-and-yet-for-no-good-reason-I-have-not-yet-bought: The White Stripes - Icky Thump, with the loud and raucous title track and the typically cool You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told). It's on my shopping list.

Best album-I-don't-know-much-about-yet-but-will-probably-buy-on-principle: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Raising Sand.

The Obligatory Year End List

This year we spent New Year’s Eve with good friends, and we spent time playing around with my friend Dan’s new stereo, which is maybe the most amazing setup I’ve ever seen. It got me thinking about music, and some of the new music I’ve stumbled upon in 2007. My favorite album of 2007: Bright Eyes – Cassadaga. I’ve been following Bright Eyes for several albums now, ever since Lifted or the Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground and it seems like it all comes together with this latest release. The more I listen to it, the more I like it. The main single from it is Four Winds, but I Must Belong Somewhere is just as accessible, and somehow I can’t stop listening to Make A Plan To Love Me.

Another find I came across this year was Regina Spektor – Begin To Hope. A few radio-friendly songs (Fidelity and On the Radio) caught my attention, but once I listened to the whole album I was hooked. Some other highlights are the haunting Sampson and the quirky That Time which somehow seems to stick in my head.

The Shins’ Wincing the Night Away has really grown on me lately. The radio hit is Phantom Limb, but after I listened several times I found I like Black Wave and A Comet Appears every bit as much.

I have to go now, but I’ll be back soon with more tunes. I promise. Really!

And note to certain people who just last week did not believe I would really post a new blog message within a week. I did it with one day to spare! Maybe this means I can get past this writer’s block and start posting again? We’ll see!

A real shitstorm

Some people talk about how much their job stinks, but last week I had them all beat. (Beaten? Whatever.) Ever since we moved into our new office building in June things have mostly been great, except that the bathrooms have been out of commission for a day or so every few weeks because they haven't been able to fully unclog the drains. So last week they replaced the pumps that clear these things out. Problem solved, they said.

Shortly after this I was working away on my computer and heard a load splashing sound. When I looked up, I saw that water was cascading out of one of the light fixtures and onto the floor. A lot of water. Maybe 12 feet from me. The entire 2' by 4' light panel was gushing. Then the smell hit. Both my neighbor Sparky and I yelled at the same time, "Crap, that's crap!" If only I had the words to describe that smell. Well, it's better if I don't. Not good.

After about 30 seconds the water was pouring out of the next ceiling panel over from the light. The one closer to us. Still onto the open floor though. So far anyway. We shut down our computer equipment and rushed over to the computers directly in the path and grabbed them as quickly as possible. Fortunately this tragic rain stopped before it actually landed on anyone or any computers. It turns out the new pumps were too powerful for the old pipes, or maybe there was a clog that got loosened, so a 4 inch drain pipe in the ceiling had burst. It took us about 15 minutes to get all of the computer equipment out of the way of the workers (who were now trying to figure out how much more shit would rain down on them/us when they cut the pipe section for the repair), then I was out of there for the day. Thank God for an internet VPN connection, I can work from home and crap hardly ever falls on my head!

Tried, denied.

I just tried and failed to get Bright Eyes tickets. Damn! They are doing a show at a 200-seat bar here in Omaha. They went on sale at 10 AM today, and not surprisingly, they were sold out by 10:01. Oh well, maybe next time.

Music Performance Anxiety

My mp3 player folds under pressure. I try not to follow the crowds, so I avoided getting an IPod way back when. Mine's a Rio Carbon that I've had for several years now, and it never gives me any trouble. Mostly. I use it probably 4 times a week, and the whole time I've had it, it's locked up on me about 5 times. And 4 of those times have been when I was either in a huge hurry or was demoing it to a group of people. We took 3 trips this summer, and the night before 2 of them and the morning of the 3rd trip it seized up as I was trying to load it up with traveling music, This American Life podcasts, etc. So each time I'm farting around pressing buttons, sticking pins in the reset button hole, powering it up and down, and Momster is walking by with armloads of stuff to be packed thinking "Hello!?! Packing! Remember we are supposed to be packing???" And I am no help at all, just sitting around cursing at this little device. Eventually I got it to work, because if you cuss at and threaten computers and electronic devices enough, and cycle the power the right number of times, you can almost always fix them. So the trips were saved, and eventually we got packed. But seriously, it never ever breaks when I am not in a hurry.

Today was the 5th inexplicable mp3 collapse. I got some cool noise-canceling headphones to bring to work because I don't like to wear the ear buds for hours at a time, and I gathered up a few work-buddies to show them my new toy. Sure enough, just when I was showing them off the damn thing locked up. Yeesh. "Ahhh, never mind, you can all go back to work now. Nothing to see here, folks. The headphones work great, it's the Rio that sucks. But it usually works too. Really!"

Of course, after everyone went back to work I got it working just fine. I guess the new IPods are looking better all the time.

I'm awake!

Hey, I'm back. For what that's worth anyway. I kind of took the summer off blog-wise and now I will try to get back to it. Sorry about the wait! Please note the new quotes feature. There are so many great musical quotes I'll try to keep that as an ongoing feature. We'll see, I guess.

I have misjudged George W Bush

I used to believe that Mr. Bush was heartless and possibly soulless, but recent events have changed my mind. Just imagine the boundless compassion a person would have to have to allow Alberto Gonzales to keep his job. I mean, to have and keep someone on your staff with such an amazing lack of credibility, accountability and knowledge about what the Attorney General role should be totally proves what a humanitarian our President truly is. And the forgiveness that W. displayed when Mr. Gonzales was crapping all over his subordinates right and left to save his own skin is truly astounding. Bravo, Mr. Bush, keep up the good work! And keep that chin up. There are undoubtedly a (scant) few countries left in the world that still respect us!

Where am I? (part 2)

It's spring and I am tired of looking at pictures of snow. This mystery location may be harder to pinpoint, so I'll accept more general answers. Keep in mind, answers like "somewhere on earth" are probably too general and will be rejected.

Know your internet, storm tracker edition

Spring is here in the midwest, and that can only mean one thing...tornadoes! (OK, it actually means a lot more than that, but whatever.) Anyway, there are lots of weather sites out there; I like this one because it shows the radar loop in motion. So it not only shows any approaching storms but you can actually tell where the storm is headed. The link hones in on Omaha, but you can just put your city and state in at the top and see weather for your area.

And its from the government, so you KNOW you can trust it!

Hint...if it's hailing and dark and you hear an unusually loud roar, you probably don't need to consult this site. Otherwise, check it out.

Here I am, and here's where I've been

I am trying to figure out how to have Blogger add an automatic first line to every one of my posts. Something like "Man, I can't believe I've gone this long without posting!". That I won't have to keep typing it myself.

I went to Summit County Colorado last week for a Ski Trip with The Guys, where I met with some of my grade-school buddies and a few others for our (mostly) annual trip. A few of the guys are way better at skiing than I am (no names, you know who you are!) so it's fun to push myself once in a while trying to keep up. And I didn't die, even on the double blacks, so maybe that means I'm stronger for it. Anyway, we skiied at Vail, Beaver Creek and some of the group also went to Keystone. I took my snowshoes so I spent a couple days trudging through the forest as well.

On Saturday we found out that the 4 of us from Omaha all had our Sunday morning flights cancelled because of snow, and the earliest flights we could get on were on Monday afternoon. The good news is that the house we were staying at is owned by the parents of one of the guys, so it was no big deal to stay another day. If you have to be stranded, that's a good way to do it!

Where am I? (part 1)

OK, it's time to play Where am I? The banner photo at the top of the blog is today's mystery location. Where is the location of the photo? Be specific, if possible.

Yay for you if you can also say where I was when I took the photo.

Man, time does fly anymore, whether or not you're having fun it seems. I can't believe I haven't blogged for a month! Oh well, I'm trying to get back in the swing of things. Things are finally starting to quiet down after the holidays, and we finally had a weekend where we were in town, there were no Christmas decorations to put away, I didn't have to log into work even one time, and life was relatively quiet. So in the middle of my quiet Saturday I decided to fix the bathroom sink drains, both of which had been slow to drain since last fall. And plenty of times since last fall I thought "Hmm, I should fix that. It can't possibly take more than 10 minutes, I just need to plunge it out, right? It's only plumbing, how hard could it be?". But I was busy, or lazy, and put it off. But Saturday, I was ready. And I figured even if it takes a half hour, it's time well spent.

Well, crap. Plumbing bites!!!!!!!!

I won't bore you with all the details, but the final count was something like 1 visible bump on my head, 3 bloody knuckles, 1 broken water input flexible pipe (I still don't know how I did that, I wasn't even messing with the water input!), 1 trip to Home Depot, 1 bucketful of hideous black goo with hair sticking out, 1 near vomit from the smell of said goo, 2 bathrooms with black goo splattered all over, 1 face with black goo on it, countless new cuss words for the girls to try out, 2 cleared drains and 4 hours of my life I'll never get back.

I really hate plumbing.

Know your Internet, Christmas Edition

So in addition to keeping our country safe from Saddam's voluminous WMD collection, our government takes on the extra duty on Christmas Eve to track Santa's progress around the globe. The site is called NORAD Tracks Santa, and is actually pretty cool, imho. You can go there now and it's not much to see yet, but starting Christmas Eve they update it every hour with a short computer generated video that shows Santa on his sleigh wherever in the world it is currently midnight. You know, Santa circling the pyramids, Santa flying over the Eiffel Tower, that sort of thing. Our girls love it and they keep checking to see where Santa is at the time, so it's a great run-up to Christmas day.

Anyway, Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Chappy Chanukah! Krazy Kwanza! Fun Festivus! Pleasant (insert your celebratory event of choice here)!

Better Know an Internet, Cosmic Edition

Today's edition might seem like it would only be for you space geeks out there, but check it out anyway; it just may wow you. Or maybe I'm such a geek that I just think regular people would like it. Either way, I've been hooked on Heavens Above for several years now. And there's no better time to visit the site than when the Space Shuttle is up there cavorting with the International Space Station. If you know where and when to look, you can frequently see the shuttle/space station linked up in orbit, sometimes brighter and larger than a jet in the evening sky. And this site tells you exactly where and when to look.

Just go to the site and tell it your location (you can look up the latitude/longitude of your city on the site). Then you can get a daily chart of most of the brighter satellites wafting over your particular head, and the chart tells you exactly what time, which direction and how high up to look. And for the next week or so, click on the Shuttle Mission STS-116 link to track the shuttle.

Special note to my friends in Seattle. You may have to climb the Space Needle to get your heads above all those clouds, or maybe just wait until summer when the clouds clear up to see all the satellites. Sorry about that!

Yyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

Awesome. The Who can still rock. I'm always wary of any arena rock tour because they seem pretty impersonal to me, as opposed to a small club where you can see the whites of the band's eyes from anywhere in the place. But I have to say, they put together an amazing light show befitting of the arena surroundings. And they had lots of big screens so you could usually see close-ups of Pete and Roger doing their things. Roger said he had a bad cold, and he did shy away from the high notes mostly, but that raspy voice was still plenty powerful. And Pete still has plenty of guitar windmills left in him.

They played a good mix of new songs from their latest, Endless Wire, and the old classics. The new stuff was good, and to my surprise I have to say that one of the high points was the very last song of the night, a quiet rendition of Tea & Theatre with only Pete and Roger onstage and Pete playing the acoustic guitar. Townshend played accoustic on several of the newer songs.

But man, the old standbys were a-smokin'! Pinball Wizard was Good, Behind Blue Eyes was Better, the long, long jam in the middle of My Generation was Even Better, and Won't Get Fooled Again proved once and for all that it's the Greatest Rock-n-Roll Song Of All Time: nee nee nee nee NEE NEE NEE NEE ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum ba-dum-dum ba-dum dum YYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! You get the picture.

And the perfect concert moment of pure joy: When they hit their stride about a third of the way into the show with Baba O'Riley. Something about that flowing synth just makes me happy!

Who?

We are going to see The Who tomorrow night, and I'm pumped! I first saw them 24 years ago in Cedar Falls, Iowa at the UNI-Dome. That was their first farewell tour. I was in high school and I was able to con my folks into letting me camp out all night at the Dome to get tickets, which was good since it sold out in a few hours. (There was no internet back then. Remember?) The show was amazing.

Then in the early nineties KT and I saw them in Kansas City. It was a sold out show at Arrowhead Statium and we had nosebleed seats, but you could still watch the old geezers rock out on the big screen. And it was good.

So now, we'll see. The show didn't sell out this time. I don't expect it to touch the experience I had at my first one back in high school, but I hear the shows have been good so far. And I've been listening to Endless Wire a lot lately to get ready, and I have to say it's pretty damn good.

I'll report on the concert in a few days.

Because computers aren't scary enough...

My folks came to see us this weekend. When they come they stay in the guest room, which is actually the futon in the basement. The basement is also where the computers are set up.

The morning after their first night, my Mom and I had the following conversation:

Mom: Jon, does your computer want more power?
Me: Huh?
Mom: Your computer was on in the night, and a couple of times it said it wants more power.
Me: Huh?
Mom: That voice. You know, on your computer. Every now and then it talked to us. It said it had to have more power. Why would it do that?
Me: (Long pause) Ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh! I get it. Did the voice sound anything like Christopher Walken?
Mom: Huh?
Me: The actor. Christopher Walken.
Mom: (Long pause)I guess so. Maybe.
Me: It doesn't want more power. It wants more cowbell!
Mom: Huh?


It's from the Cowbell skit on SNL with Cristopher Walken and Will Farrel. Every time we get an email the computer plays the snippet where Walken says " I gotta have more cowbell!". So if you ever want to freak out your folks, or anyone who sleeps near your computer, this seems to be the way to do it.

More Know Your Internet

Today's internet site is all about internet shopping. This time of year I try to stay out of stores as much as I can, so I buy almost everything online as far as Christmas presents, etc. The site is Woot. The crazy thing is that they only sell one product line a day. The new product starts at midnight and stays until they sell it out. Then that's it for the day. And you never know what it will be beforehand. But they do have some good deals from time to time. And the occasional woot-offs and Bags of Crap are kind of cool.

Disclaimer: I have not as of yet purchased from this site, but I have several friends who have, and I've been close a couple of times. Roombas, anyone?

The times they are a-changin'!

I actually have a reason for not posting lately. I started a new job 2 weeks ago now, and so things have been fairly crazy leading up to that and since. But the dust seems to be settling a bit now, and it's all good. So far, anyway.

I'm a computer geek, and the company I worked for sold the software product I've been helping develop for the last several years. I liked working on what I was working on, so I went with it and now I work for the new company that bought the product. I'm still doing basically the same thing, and with most of our old development team intact, which is a good thing. And now I'm at a much smaller company than before, which is a very good thing. I started my career at a 12 person company and my last company has over 1000 people, and I can tell you that size does matter! And you may disagree, but I say smaller is better.

So after 2 weeks now we pretty much have the key people we need to move forward with this, and I'm in a new building that is easier to get to, and I still get to wear jeans and a tee shirt to work any damn time I want to. And I no longer share a building locked in a war of wills with that cadre of insane women who spent all summer whining about how hot they were and cranking the thermostat down to 69 degrees. Hello... maybe don't wear a sweater to work when it's over 100 degrees outside! Especially when other people (me) are wearing summer-appropriate clothes!!!!

The only issue with the new situation so far is that I'm now in a fairly high-profile position. Impressive, eh? Except not really, because what I really mean to say is that my cube faces out onto the corner of 2 main walkways, and everyone walking by can see my computer screen. There's no rule about surfing or anything, but I'm still pretty self conscious about how much time I can spend reading blogs while I'm at work. That's all I need is to be known as that new guy who just farts around on the internet all day. But the good news is that our little product group is a seperate business unit from the rest of the company and so we will move into our own space in a few months. Then I'll either be back in my own office or at least a less-travelled cube, and then I won't be so visible, and can read all your blogs without paranoia. But fear not, I'll still work, too.