Year: 2007

Although I’ve only mentioned The Black Keys a couple of times on this blog, a quick glance at my last.fm charts will show you just how much they’ve shot up my “greatest f@#$ing bands in the world” list. A great oversight occurred when I failed to mention their show at the Nokia Theatre that I attended back in November. There was no way I would miss it, but as the date neared and I found myself with an extra ticket I eventually forced my lovely wife to join me. She likes their music, but just isn’t much of a concert goer these days. But boy were we both happy that she finally conceded to come along.

I think the reason I didn’t talk about the show was that I simply couldn’t find the words to express how mind-blowing it truly was. And I’m not exaggerating here. I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that show belongs in the top 10, possibly top 5, performances I’ve ever seen. When you’ve just got two people up on stage, it’s hard to imagine such a thrilling performance, but when the singer has a gorgeous, bluesy voice and incredible chops on the guitar and the drummer is… well, just sick on the drums, how can you go wrong? But reviewing a live show cannot do it justice, so how could I convey yet another instance of awesomeness to my readers?

Enter Fabchannel. A couple of weeks ago, someone in a music forum mentioned this site which has posted the full videos for hundreds of concerts performed at a couple of venues in The Netherlands. This is totally legit, as the venues themselves are taking part in the taping and the artists give their permission. To my delight, they had a performance of the Black Keys from last year posted. I have multiple shows of theirs, but no video, and watching them play is almost as breathtaking as actually listening to them play. And so I present to you the final song from their set, Till I Get My Way:

They messed up the tracks on this show, so the first minute plus is actually the end of “Grown So Ugly” (the one track I really wanted to hear that they didn’t play). Enjoy that, and then watch how Patrick totally destroys the drums on the final song.

• Go to this Man vs. Beast post over at Chris’s Invincible Super Blog. While enjoying the many humorous situations in which superheroes find themselves at odds with the animal kingdom, take special note of the third picture. Yes, that is in fact a zombie dolphin. Yes, they are riddling him with bullets. Yes, that comic looks beyond awesome.
• Penny Arcade is having a fire sale! I might just need their tribute to punctuation on my person…
• Going through old mail archives (a project of mine I will talk about later), I found a directory of Chris Pirillo‘s old Lockergnome newsletter – totally old school. Now it looks like Chris is getting the band back starting it up again. Plain text is the wave of the future!
• Did you guys watch the big game match tournament last night? I know a lot of you only care about the commercials, so just go over to Youtube and make sure you didn’t miss any. I’ve got too many comments to really organize, so I’ll defer to Lang Whitaker as I agree with most of his comments (although I have to say that the Coke commericials were probably the best I’ve seen).
• Sandbox may be just what I’m looking for to help me redesign this site. The entire Plaintext.org site looks pretty useful.
• Speaking of this site, I did upgrade to WordPress 2.1 and it went very smoothly. And the new draft autosave feature has saved at least one post from my own carelessness so far.

Man, that really helped me clear some tabs. I’ve got to do that more frequently.

In case you didn’t notice – and I’m sure you didn’t – I changed the theme for this site again. It was a subtle shift – this is actually the theme that the previous one was based on. But I made a startling revelation the other day: Spotlight (the previous theme) has no search box in it by default! How am I supposed to remember anything that’s gone on in my life over the past few years if I can’t search through my blog? 20 years from now I’ll probably be doing searches for “wedding day” so that I don’t forget my anniversary…

While I do enjoy this theme, I really do need to tear it apart and make it my bitch own. Yeah, like the typical cry of the blogger, I make statements like this on a regular basis. But I really am starting to feel that creative bug biting me, as if to say, “Hey, dumbass, put up a photo or two like you keep promising.” Yes, my creative bug is as much of a smart ass as me. Did you expect him to be all sweet and cuddly?

At the very least, I can take comfort in the fact that I have been posting somewhat regularly this year. A quick look at my archives made me realize that I managed to post more in January than I had since… well, I can’t remember what month it was, but it was certainly before I got stuck in this married to my wonderful wife… So as I rapidly approach my 4th blogiversary (remember, I don’t count the first post), let’s hope I manage to keep my ass in gear rather than just talking about it being stuck in park…

UPDATE: Oh wow, so THAT’S what widgets are! I was able to switch back to Spotlight thanks to the wonder that is the dynamic sidebar and widgets in WordPress. Take a gander at my new sidebar and you’ll see what I mean. Now I’m totally inspired… totally!

I really want to visit the Salton Sea after seeing the possibilities.

Scott Adams explains exactly why I just give up even discussing politics with people who use the term flip-flop for anything but a pair of cheap, foam sandals:

For those of you who do not follow politics, flip-flopping is what happens when an intelligent person revises his opinion because the situation changes or new information becomes available. Flip-flopping goes by many other names including: rational behavior, thinking, and not being a frickin’ idiot.

And no, don’t expect me to vote this time around, either. None of the inherent flaws in the system that were so glaring the last two elections have been seriously discussed either. If this country doesn’t take it’s political system seriously, why should I?

I went to a Microsoft seminar this morning… alright, I guess it wasn’t really a Microsoft seminar. It was conducted by a local consulting firm who is partnered with MS, and they were pimping the release of Vista and Office 2007. Then again, there was a Microsoft guy there who did the real presentation – specifically this guy. I have to say that it’s pretty cool that I saw this guy speak today and could then check out his blog upon arriving at the office.

I’ve been running a release candidate of Vista for some time now, but there was still the “whiz bang” factor of seeing it on a decent computer as well as hearing about the features I haven’t even touched yet. Even cooler was finally getting some real exposure to the new interface design of Office 2007. Yes, the ribbon looks awesome, and makes me want to upgrade my company… tomorrow. Unfortunately, logistics say that won’t be happening for several months if not a year. But I really feel that the new interface designs Microsoft are using will help out users once they actually submit themselves to it (and not struggle to make their screen look like it’s still 1996).

Going to this seminar also emphasized how much I really do miss the real tech-heavy work I did back in ye olde days of NetTech. Being the head of IT at a small-ish company has a lot of perks, but you can really let yourself lose a grip on current technology trends if you’re not careful. It’s time I reclaim my inner geek! Fortunately, that entails more of me doing a better job at work, and not so much of neglecting my personal hygiene.

EDIT: I feel like a total mo-mo. I forgot to mention that I won a raffle for this Vista Administrator’s Guide – copies of which were provided by the aforementioned Michael Murphy from Microsoft. Yay! I’m a winner!

Can you believe it’s already been 6 months? Actually, considering we’ve been together for 4 years now, I can’t believe it’s only been 6 months. Honestly, the wedding and the honeymoon seem so long ago. And, to be even more honest…ly, I miss it terribly.

With all of the photos that we’ve gone through lately (on top of the professional photos that we showed to everyone and their uncle, I finally took the disposable cameras into Costco), I realize just how wonderful the experience was. And now with a number of friends getting hitched this year (3 so far) discussing all of the planning, etc. I get a little jealous that they still get to look forward to it, while it’s already in our past. I am serious when I say that it was probably the greatest day in my life – I wish we could throw another one every year for our anniversary.

So far all of you still looking forward to the date, just make sure to forget about all of the money woes that day and enjoy it for everything it’s worth.

As for our mini-celebration, Lisa is working late tonight. Maybe I’ll be able to convince her that we should dig halfway into the cake top in honor of digging halfway through our first year. Either way, tomorrow night we plan on going for a far more appropriate fancy-pants dinner.

Yes, I really needed to use 4 exclamation points when describing the cuteness of these photos of a real life Bambi and Thumper. Go ahead, look at those photos and just try to use less than 4 exclamation points when talking about them. I bet you can’t!

These are the days that Lisa acts as a mother to me. For some reason, I hate zipping my jacket shut despite the frigid temperatures. Actually, I know the reason – it makes it more difficult to reach things in my pocket. It’s not so much that I hate zipping my jacket as it is that I am too lazy to have to deal with unzipping and then re-zipping it whenever I pay for a cup of coffee. Yes, this is the type of laziness that one must plan out in advance.

I must admit that I’m enjoying a return to real winter weather. Nothing kills your optimism for the new year like watching An Inconvenient Truth (by the by, an incredible movie) and then walking outside in short-sleeved shirts in the middle of January. Oh no, global warming is totally a myth…

The real issue is the constant changes. When we used to have real winters up here, and the temperatures would somewhat gradually get colder until you just became accustomed to not feeling your extremities for months at a time, it wasn’t a big deal. Now we get spoiled by beach weather for a week only to have the temperature plunge down enough to freeze the vodka in your martini the instant you set it down in your car’s cup holder…

That’s enough to make me want to buy a fleet of SUVs and keep them running 24-7 around my house… But then I find out that adorable little penguins are disappearing all around the globe and I snap right back into my normal frame of mind and start forcing Escalades off the road and slashing the tires of Hummers…

Site5 has been a fantastic host for me so far, and they’re about to get even better. I’ve decided that paying for web service like a reseller is just plain silly, and it’s time for me to switch to a sensible plan. Thanks to their $5 deal, I’ve cut the cost of running this (and other sites) by 75%.

Unfortunately, the switch might not be so smooth. So don’t be surprised if you experience some wonkiness around these parts tonight or tomorrow.

See you on the flip side….

EDIT: Everything appears to be go! I’m sure it’ll take some time for all DNS servers to update, but at least I’m getting the new site.