ehowton ◾ ◾ Entries tagged withmusic

2008-05-27 03:30

Moving a family involves a cast of thousands.

catttitude and I (mostly

catttitude) put a lot of prep-work into our moving to make it as smooth as possible, because let's face it - it's not. Smooth that is. In fact it sucks. But every time I've moved since leaving the military (they took care of everything) I have enjoyed help. Hell, in moving from

drax0r's house in Anna to my own, an entire moving-party showed up to assist. Touching, really.

And when we were loading up to move to STL my wife and I worked a 12-hour day standing alongside that very truck in my avatar. I had five people assist (four if you include my father's "supervision" assisting): My mother (who tackled the child angle),

drax0r (who showed up when we were finished), Big Dave, (who can curl small cars like barbells), and

celtmanx (who did more visiting than *actual* moving). Nonetheless, when I discovered that he was moving from his 4000-sq/ft house in Fort Worth, 30-minutes Southwest to a 100-year-old Victorian off the town square in Granbury without engaging my assistance, I volunteered.

And this is where my title fits in. First, he plied me with Monster drinks in the garage fridge. Secondly, he presented me with a box of Macanudo tubos - ! - Then he worked me like a beast of burden.

I feel dirty.

My wife deserves half that box of cigars for watching the kids alone for 12 hours!

Eight hours later our 26' U-Haul was loaded and we were in Granbury where he hired a 20-year old college student to unload the truck so I could make my way back home. With it being a holiday and every State, City, Town & Municipality cop on the road trapping speeders, I had to restrain myself from driving 100+ mph across Interstate 20, my usual modus operandi. This decision was just one in a confluence of events which lead me to overwhelming enjoy an unexpected surprise: Redwoods.

Seeing the cover didn't bring back any memories of the entry whatsoever (though I did go back and read it as soon as I got home), and the minimalistic title gave me no clues. A quick check of the track listing wasn't conclusive, as I couldn't tie anything together on my own. Of the 21 tracks I wasn't familiar with fifteen of them. Because there were so many cops out, I simply put my cruise on the speed limit - something I almost never do. And because I wasn't barrel-assing across the Interstate at a hundred miles an hour dodging traffic, I was more relaxed. Finally, because I had been worked like a beast of burden I was exhausted. Everything formed the perfect shell in which to enjoy this very discrete album.

I popped in the disc and was immediately rewarded.

swashbuckler332 has a tendency to "set the tone" of the album with the first track. It was a beautiful track. I checked the liner notes. "Wendy Carlos." Huh. I know her from her classical Moog album (the first..classical album to ever go platinum? Anyone? Is that right?) and her later work with Telarc. This sounded very un-Moog like. It was light and angelic. I was smiling. I looked down and was on Track 3. "GODDAMNIT! HE DID IT TO ME AGAIN!" I backed up three tracks and started over. It was even better the second time. I hear something I haven't heard in a very long time - Pleasentville. I've wanted that album since the movie came out - the first thing I ever saw Tobey Maguire in, and the best role he's ever played. He embodied his character and the score embodied him. I close my eyes and get goosebumps. The tree fucking ignites! "HOLY SHIT I'M DRIVING A CAR WHY ARE MY EYES CLOSED!" I don't know why I don't own this movie on DVD. I'm angry about that. I'm also angry I missed this song the first time around - of course...I'm on track four! What happened to Tracks 2 & 3? Mostly, I blame the album on the clarinet. It seems to me that some of the tracks end and begin with the *same* clarinet playing the *same* note. "Incomprehensible!"

Unlike Excelsior! where each theme was selected for its individual properties and woven into a tapestry of similarly oriented themes for an overall purpose, Redwoods appears to try to accomplish perhaps a less difficult task, and in doing so, allows for greater continuity. I'll put it this way: Even of the albums I have, the tracks are made better on this disc than they are in their original setting, because they all compliment each other.

I may have to shelve Excelsior! for awhile, because I've found a new favorite.

Thanks Swash. You're full of surprises.

◾ Current Location: 75409
◾ Current Music: Redwoods

◾ Tags:

2008-05-18 15:15

( The List: )

◾ Current Location: 75409
◾ Current Music: Bond Beauties

◾ Tags:

music,
music list

2008-05-11 22:40

I'd never heard of Michael Giacchino prior to The Incredibles and my hands-down favorite Pixar movie came with an incredible and unexpected gift: A score unlike anything I'd heard in many years. A sound which not only fit the movie perfectly, but was able to capture the spirit of spy films with a fresh, updated sound. Nothing I've heard of his since has touched me the way this score has. When the album was released I'd read how Pixar had tried to get John Barry to score it, and that Michael had simply borrowed from the genre to create his sound.

But how do we really validate that it was a success?

Growing up my father had this double-album by Roland Shaw and His Orchestra - The Return of James Bond in "Diamonds are Forever" and other Secret Agent Themes that I enjoyed throughout every level of my musical development, as it never went out of style (though it does admittedly sound *slightly* dated now). That big band jazz sound playing a plethora of secret agent themes from not only the James Bond movies, but also the popular television shows during the spy heyday never really gets old does it? Knowing my love for this particular album, about a year ago, my father had it converted to MP3:

( Track Listing )

Driving to my folks this weekend for Mother's Day, I slipped the disc in the player. My son asked, "Is this fireplace music?"
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"Fireplace music." He repeated. I was perplexed, so started down my normal path (

schpydurx is intimately familiar with this routine...)
"We have a fireplace, son, but there's no music involved." I offered.
"No, is this music for fireplaces?" My eight-year old tries to clarify.
"What makes you ask?"
"It sounds like when you make a fire in the fireplace."

I finally get it. You see, the first track is the worst for the pops associated with needles and records - after that, it smoothes out considerably. His age does not include any information whatsoever about LP's pressed on vinyl; the nearest association was the crackling of wood on the fireplace when I build a fire.

My father played a variety of music while I was growing up, but the majority of it was classical, broadway, and scores. I am no different. We were about halfway through the album when my son asks, "Dad, is this The Incredibles?"

Well done, Mr, Giacchino.

You have been validated.

◾ Current Location: 75409
◾ Current Music: Roland Shaw and His Orchestra - The Return of James Bond

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2008-04-27 08:25

OSX 10.5 "Leopard" now up and running on my mac mini. User 'catttitude' is now primary user on her mac mini. Xubuntu now upgraded to 8.04. DVD-RW installed to replace my failing CD/RW drive in my XP/linux dual-boot box. Failing CD/RW relegated to an external enclosure. Monitor 'riser' installed on my desk (now that I don't have a 150-lb 22" CRT):

Daughter woke me up at 0400: "Daddy, I woke up...in the middle of the night!" My wife got out of bed to tuck her back in, but I've been awake ever since. Revisiting some old friends on Space Opera and Space Out and making some new ones. For example - I have an 'extras' download of Poledouris' Starship Troopers but with no track listing and it being in such disarray, I never listen to it. Being presented this way is much nicer. It just works, and the transition between "Whiskey Outpost Rescue" and "Nesmith And Mathazar" make it all the more delightful.

I'll be making pancakes for breakfast (provided I can stay awake that long - I stayed awake in part due to being stopped up, and my antihistamine just kicked in, dragging me down with it). I've been simmering my dad's recipe homemade syrup on the stove for nearly two hours. It should be good and thick by the time it's ready.

The boy woke up and started playing his Lego Star Wars game. I think I'll catch up with him and try to complete a companion piece to my steampunk open-cockpit plane I built a couple of weeks back.

Good times.

◾ Current Location: 75409
◾ Current Music: Space Opera/Space Out

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2008-04-21 18:49

Doing what I said could never be done (and still managing to miss quite a bit, I'm sure) I decided to catalog my music this weekend after moving my media out of the bedroom. At over 2000 physical CD's just writing them down was laborious, not to mention arranging them by genre (and, in cases of my classical music by label) then alphabetically and typing everything up....well, exhausting. I spent two days doing this. Separating my musicals from my soundtracks from my scores first, and only then deciding to add what I have in iTunes.

*sigh*

At 80GB of songs, most of them scores, that genre is my lowest ratio, physical vs. digital, sitting at about 1:1. This turned out to be more time intensive than I ever wanted. And no, I didn't want to export my iTunes database into XML, import it into a spreadsheet and reformat it. Bah! So what will likely be a GRAND LIST will ultimately never be updated and shortly after its publication, languish in obscurity forever.

But that's nothing. When I was in Germany in 1990, I met a man who had THREE-THOUSAND COMPACT DISCS - all of them soundtracks. IN NINETEEN-NINETY! That's crazy to think about!

Then there's John Williams.

When I was but a boy in shortpants, there were only two film composes I knew: John Barry, and John Williams.

And Mr. Williams brought the world Star Wars.

In 1977 I saw Star Wars an unprecedented (even today) NINE TIMES in the theater and we stood in line to purchase the double-LP at the music store. It was all black, with a barely visible shadow of Darth Vader's helmet on it. It opened up between the two records to show stills from the film. Luke Skywalker was my hero, and John Williams made him come to life more than Mark Hamill ever did. My father had one of those "Reader's Digest" stereo systems back in the day that he ran his 4-track through. So when the entire soundtrack was simulcast in Dallas for the uninterrupted network television premiere, he recorded that as well. Just listening to Vader breath in stereo in a day when movies weren't yet being released on media. The man could do no wrong.

I "ooohed" and "aaahed" in all the right places with Close Encounters, Superman was a mighty step back in the right direction (and gives me goosebumps even today) but my attention was caught once again with Raiders of the Lost Ark! That wonderful Williams sound. I remember it like it was yesterday - the thrill that ran through the theater. Wow.

Then the dry spell.

He was busy with other things, I was busy with other things.

Ten years of...well, nothing notable that made an impact on me.

In 1993 I was TDY to MacDill Air Force Base supporting USCENTCOM, and voraciously reading, and watching movies at the high-end Hyde Park theater, as U.S. Servicemen could get a ticket any time of the day for $2. This particular week, I'd seen a lot of Jurassic Park plushies and lunchboxes at the mall. Must be a new kids movie out I thought. I JUST ABOUT SHIT MYSELF WHEN THAT T-REX RAISED HIS HEAD AND SCREAMED THE FIRST TIME!

The next day I made a beeline to the mall, bought the cassette and listened to it over and over and over. I put the CAV version laserdisc on 6-month pre-order, sent the cassette to my father when I bought the CD (he blew out his speakers with the first track) and hosted a Jurassic Park viewing party when I returned home from Saudi (thanks to

photogoot for picking it up for me while I was overseas).

Dual of the Fates was the next item which impressed me as he reprised his role in the Star Wars franchise, but the opening strains of Harry Potter once again confirmed for me that he still had it, and why I've always loved this man. The way he can make me feel a certain emotion, with just his mind, is amazing.

Sure there's a string of dull compositions in-between that I just cannot sink my teeth into, and though I cannot wax intelligent on this matter like

swashbuckler332, no name in film music, I bet, is known to those outside its fanbase, than John Williams. I've pre-ordered Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at amazon.com for an amazing price of $9.99 and I fully expect to be blown away, once again.

◾ Current Location: 75409
◾ Current Music: Barry - The Black Hole

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2008-01-23 17:02

Never have I heard such scathing words over an adult contemporary singer. Marilyn Manson? Sure. Sarah Brightman? You wouldn't think so, but there it is. Most reviews I've read are either hot or cold. People hate her or people love her. Very few are indifferent. To me, she's a guilty pleasure. I enjoy what she brings to the table - her range and arrangements. As a classical music/opera lover, she appeals to that side of me. The last decade or so has brought us other "crossover" glamor babes such as the group Bond or Opera Babes but none with quite the class nor finesse of Ms. Brightman. And she doesn't just add an electronic drum beat to a classical piece as her contemporaries are wont to do - she uses her vocal range as an instrument, often switching between her classically-trained operatic voice and adult contemporary entertainer.

Recently, Amazon.com sent me an unsolicited email hawking her new release, Symphony (due out January 29). I made my way down to their preview samples section (I love the day and age in which we live) and sampled all. "Fleurs Du Mal" my favorite, as it sounds operatic, and "I Will Be With You (Where The Lost Ones Go)" my least favorite, because if I wanted to listen to some guy I don't know sing...

I have the physical media to Phantom of the Opera (Highlights), Time to Say Goodbye, Eden, and La Luna. Eden is by far my favorite of those three - I think because its more up-tempo than the other two. I found Time to Say Goodbye too heavy-handed. I missed Classics and Harem though I noticed they were both on my "Recommended For You" list. Choosing to try-before-I-buy, I torrented her discography and discovered something which most of you are probably already familiar with: Dive. Wow! How did I miss this? 1993. I had just arrived to Langley AFB and was doing a LOT of traveling. What a fantastic album! So yeah, now I'm pumped about Sarah again. Maybe I'll pre-order Symphony.

◾ Current Location: 75409
◾ Current Music: Brightman - Discography

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2007-06-25 16:47

Breakfast with the family at IHOP Saturday for brunch, then to the hotel. I checked in and by the time we unloaded the car and made it to the room, discovered it wasn't a suite. Back to the front desk. The clerk didn't know what to say. "But I paid for a suite." I showed him the receipt he had just given me. He was very confused. The manager came out and made everything right. Of course at 0100 the fire alarm went off, bright strobes filling the room with white light; the klaxon blaring. Neither I, nor the children awoke. My wife roused me from my slumber, ready to snatch up the children and exit the building. "I'll be right back." I told her. I made my way down the hall towards the front desk. The alarm went silent. There was a group of young men and women standing in the foyer. One of them put his hand up and said, "It was a false alarm, you can return to your room." I stopped dead in my tracks, looked him up and down, and walked right past him. Asshole. I got the same story at the front desk, so returned to my room. This shit has happened to me before. My wife's rush of adrenaline kept her awake another hour or so while I fell back into a deep sleep. Until several hours later, when the 46-inch plasma television in our room powered itself on, once again filling the room with light and noise. I chose to sleep through this one, and at some point my wife reached for the remote and powered it off. In other words, not much rest this weekend. My parents were at a wedding the next morning, so we went shopping and drove out to visit MADDOG and pick up his gift to me, a Netra t1125:

As this is a telco box, it has no Sun PS/2 ports - so defaults to tty. Mr. MADDOG provided a USB/FIREWIRE card and I helped myself to the Raptor GFX framebuffer from the spare (read Tony's) RAVE (thanks dude) in order to bring it up with a head. Unfortunately, the USB mac keyboard via Belkin Flip KVM didn't do the trick, so when I get home today with my newly acquired Sun Microsystems USB keyboard (which, from my understanding WILL init a display) I'll have to reeingineer a few things to get back on target. If all goes well, I'll begin my build this evening.

Afterward we hit the Half-Price Bookstore where I bought the following:

John Williams: Seven Years in Tibet (With Yo-Yo Ma on cello).

Graeme Revell: Aeon Flux

Run Lola Run

Beethoven: Fidelio (the full opera)

Silva release: The A to Z of Fantasy TV Themes - Battlestar Galactica

( Track Listing )

Some of these songs sound like cheap knock-off's, but to have some of these themes I haven't seen anywhere else is pretty cool. This is made up for however, with the Essential Zimmer I ran across. It nice to have full orchestrations of his usually synthesized work. It adds depth. Very nice.

The Sun keyboard didn't work. I pulled the USB card out of the 66MHz slot and put the framebuffer in there - still didn't work. I daisy-chained some Molex power connectors to power the firewire port on the car just in case - nothing. Mr. MADDOG is sending some serial connectors my way. I lost my terminal console during the dissolution of WDT :(

◾ Current Location: 75070
◾ Current Music: The A to Z of Fantasy TV Themes - Battlestar Galactica

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2007-06-19 02:08

Sure I bought the CD because the winged chick has big boobs. Who says sex doesn't sell? Either way, its a fantastic album! I was walking around Fry's looking for something EXACTLY like this to listen to. Granted I bought it blind, but I sometimes do that, and in this case, I'm glad I did. I require more CD cover art with large-breasted women on them. Call me shallow. I've listened to the album at least half a dozen times today.

Finished up my mindterm installation. I shelved it for a couple of weeks, but something recently has come up where I need it. I've been waiting for this a long time, and if it works...wow. I'm hoping it uses http protocol via ssh on the server side only and doesn't try to port local ssh out via http. We'll see. I test it tomorrow. For those of you have accounts, you can find it on http://darkvoyager.com Just follow the Mindterm link. I'm unsure I'll be able to quickly re-create my work once I stand up my new Solaris 10 box - the certification of public keys was a real bitch.

I suppose now, with that under my belt, I ought to try and fix ampache. I still can't get it to catalog my NFS mounted songs from my OSX box.

I'm up much too late. I even outlasted

drax0r My wife is up watching Buffy on DVD and I don't have a car tomorrow. Her's is still in the shop (we're up to $500 so far) and she needs mine to go pick up the kids tomorrow. I'll be carpooling with drax0r - whenever that may be. He's not what you'd call an, "Early riser."

◾ Current Location: 75409
◾ Current Music: N3: Ninty-Nine Nights

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2007-04-19 16:39

Not bad at all. I don't exactly know what it is about it. Wikipedia classifies it as 'electrogoth' and iTunes imports it as 'industrial.' I disagree with the latter, so...electrogoth it is! I think the elements I enjoy about this album can all be attributed to recall of memories. Its reminiscent of both the bands I used to hear haunting the club scene in Germany when I was over there, but with the addition of having an 80's sound to it. With that, might I suggest

ximo give it a listen if he's not already familiar with them. I'd have to listen to them back-to-back with VNV Nation before comparing the two, but looky, I've already gone and drawn a similarity betwixt the two.

Rec'd my T-60. I didn't have a copy of XP which contained the SATA driver required for the harddrive, so I retained the SOE and simply modified the registry entries and services.msc to cull out the unneeded horseshit which usually plagues such an installation. Besides, it was easier to keep all the IBM specific software which was already contained within the operating system. Its a rather large form factor. Not as bulky as those massive Inspiron laptops Dell sells, but nowhere near the portability of the X1 I've grown accustomed to, either. The good news, I suppose, is that this machine has a 2.0GHz CoreDuo processor, and 2GB of RAM. I've been playing with a combination of Parallels Workstation (similar to VMware) & dual-booting to put an alternate O/S on this machine. I'd prefer Parallels to mitigate a reboot, and I have the RAM for it, but I'm having issues with the SATA driver. In the meantime, I'm downloading kubuntu 7.0.4 for giggles; we'll run everything off that and see what's what.

The time grown near, and yet, here I sit, no further along. I felt a great sense of foreboding the other day. An unease settling quickly upon me, the gravity of everything finally coming to me. Leaving

galinda822, questioning my own abilities where this new position fits in, selling the house, relocating my family, juggling once again everything I juggle when I I go through this...then I realized I was just getting sick. I went to the doctor, he put me on narcotics for a couple of days and I slept. I slept like the dead. Slight fever last night, but when I awoke, I knew I would emerge victorious. I always do.

Working my last day of work tomorrow. A full day as the Site Service Delivery Manager. Then, I turn in my badge and drive to Wichita to pick up little girl, returning home the next morning. It greatly interferes with my Friday Night Movie Night and, if all continues to go as planned, what would have been our last. I've packed up all but 64 of my Cd's, those remaining in a travel case until I relocate. I'll take those with me to Wichita. Another 14-hours on the road this weekend...

Lost my love, lost my land
Lost the last place I could stand
There's no place I can be
Since I've found Serenity
And you can't take the sky from me.

◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: Batman Begins

◾ Tags:

album art,
music

2007-03-03 04:00

I miss playing 12-hour overnight games of Starcraft in the NOC 4-days a week with

unixwolf and

leonardii. Those were good times. I miss playing Diablo II with

drax0r in Mass and the many weekends of SMACKDOWN LAN parties afterwards in Texas. I miss playing Dungeon Siege with

danzigfried every night for 14-months after hours in Wichita. I miss playing Star Trek: Elite Force with

celtmanx and

drax0r until the middle of the night on the weekends, even though

drax0r would kick our asses. Odd, since I don't consider myself a gamer. But give me a good RPG and a couple of guys, and I'm up all night. I don't enjoy single-player games, and I don't like playing online, even against people I know. I like a LAN game, usually cooporative, where you and your friends can get caught up in the excitement and share in the exhilaration of victory and the sorrows of defeat. I enjoy being a Warrior, taking (or sharing) lead with another tank while my trusty Rangers begin bombarding my prey before I even lay a hit. I like sharing my gold and outfitting myself and my counterparts with magical items that assist in more powerful blows and more substantial armor. I share my health potions freely and love it when someone wants to play the mage - simultaneously protecting the entire group with spells and casting healing on players which need it most. You really don't know a person until you've gone into combat with them. A simpler time.

Rec'd my two soundtracks today. Oscar by Elmer Bernstein, and Gorky Park by James Horner. I've never heard a better rendition of Largo Al Factotum (from The Barber Of Seville) than this one, and now I know why - it was conducted by Mr. Bernstein himself!

As CLI is much faster than GUI over VNC, I learned how to mount .dmg images on teh max0r, which makes installing new applications quick and pain free:

hdiutil attach [filename].dmg

From there its a straight recursive copy into your /Applications folder.I was looking for an OSX lj client which could import Semagic's .slj file if I started a post at work on my XP box and wanted to finish it up at home.

Wife had a conversation with the contractor for the roof the other day. That marks the third time he's been over. He starts work next week. The insurance check more than covers the work, even it it runs over. The successful completion of this project will make the wife happy. We saved some money by doing all our own inside painting. I had him provide a second quote to paint the whole exterior of the house. And for an additional $600, put siding on just the front of the house to increase its curb appeal for future sell value.

It's midnight and I'm still at work. We're halfway through the Blackberry server upgrade which will allow us to automatically send the DST patch to all the devices. Running on the old application, it would have required my staff touch each and every device...by next Sunday. And because this is the corporate headquarters, the client is always traveling. We did the upgrade tonight because the power is going down Saturday morning. I'm shutting down all my servers at 0530 for the weekend work. I'm also a week behind now because of the virus on my DST patching plan. I'm trying to play catch-up before I get thrown to the wolves, and I'm running out of time. I also have paperwork to do from rebooting and patching my production servers this past week during the virus battle, but our online repository database is also down this weekend. I plan to sleep sometime between 0600 and 2100 today.

Slept seven hours from 0600-1300; then went to Barnes & Borders and picked up the Original Cast recording of The Man of La Mancha. The I finished my Balvenie 12-year Double Wood Scotch. Its much nicer than Sheep Dip, and I update my scotch review to reflect. I'm unsure, based on this week's activities that I'll be able to go to bed at a decent hour. That being said, I'm going to dust off my Dungeon Siege Strategy Guide and game tonight.

◾ Current Location: 63134
◾ Current Music: Twilight Zone 40th Anniversary 4-disc set

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2007-02-21 08:23

stty erase ^? Are you kidding me? I haven't typed that up in so long, I forgot the syntax. I stopped at 'stty space' and thought, wtf? That's right, we're talking Solaris 2.5.1 here. Old Skool. And just between us, I haven't used telnet since...2001? Ooooh - then I used ftp to pull the file over! How crazy is that?

I got about two hours of sleep last night and downed a 16-ounce Bawls on my way in to lay the ground work for my coffee this morning. Sure that's overkill, but I'm a man of excesses. Its a gift...and a curse. I'm already sick to my stomach. I have learned, however, that with enough coffee in my system, I am able to fold time. Now that's a pretty cool trick! If only I could learn to go back in time to correct mistakes I've made instead of only folding time forward...

Purchased Lady in the Water score this weekend. I'll likely listen to it until I get downright sick of it. My son spent the last half of his BORDER'S gift card Christmas gift from

galinda822 on Miss Bindergarten Has a Wild Day in Kindergarten. He loves it, and in retrospect I think help offset the cost of my CD by about seventy cents. Bonus! Anyway - as I was coming in early, and it was dark and quiet...I finally got to listen to and enjoy the first track (its a quiet piece and no where at work, home, or in the car is usually quiet). This got me longing for my hour and a half commutes again. Yes I hated them at the time, but with the Infinity system in the Sebring LXi and 75 miles to wake up to rousing music with a travel mug of coffee as your only friend...Ah, and because it was so early it took me 9 minutes instead of 11 to get here this morning.

Worked from home yesterday and took the boy to the doctor while my wife went to her scheduled appointment. Spent a lot of time chatting up

galinda822 on instant messenger during an attack of email over which I was victorious. Weilding my wit as a sword and my staff's knowledge as armor, I fought off the electronic mail and those evildoers behind the flood of messages.

Ordered Oscar soundtrack (Elmer Bernstein) and Gorky Park (James Horner). My father had the latter on vinyl and I'm looking forward with great anticipation to them both. Oscar was panned by the critics, but I always enjoyed it - and the interweaving of the score with the operatic selections chosen. Manifique!

My wife is so sweet - I asked her to put a CD in teh max0r so I could rip it remotely and pull the files over to my computer at work. I got home later that night and found the empty CD case next to the computer. Later, when she came down to the office, she asked me about it. "Where's the CD?" I asked her? She pointed to my Solaris server. What a sweetheart, she is, really.

This was my first entry using Semagic. Thanks to

somebritinmass for the reality check below. Looks like I'm right on target!

◾ Current Music: Six Feet Under - Music From the HBO Original Series

◾ Tags:

2007-02-10 23:35

My eyes are burning. I'm tired at the end of a busy day, doing mostly mundane things, but things which needed to be done. All that nonsense is behind me now and perhaps tomorrow I can do nothing at all - my usual weekend goal.

When I awoke this morning I turned to my wife and said, "I haven't made burgers in a good long time." That was all it took - after breakfast I packed up the kids to buy 2-lbs of fresh ground sirloin. In between I filled up with gas, washed the car, bought a log of scooby-snack, and two boomerangs for the children we later threw around the park before I dropped them off at their friend's house. With the children gone my wife and I moved & assembled the rest of their bedroom in the basement (where they've been sleeping on just their mattresses since the tree fell through the root) and then tended to the vehicles getting them ready for this next week. Once I was cleaned up, I began the careful selection of ingredients which were to be mixed into the sirloin, lit the grill, and seared the perfectly-formed patties with a good side of smoke, basting mine in Tabasco's Chipotle sauce. With the sliced onion, tomatoes & sharp cheddar cheese on the toasted buns & the burgers fresh off the grill, they were, in a word, perfect. You can't buy burgers like that. The children arrived with three other neighborhood friends so I grilled them up two packages of dogs which were quickly devoured.

Afterwards, I hit PX Liquors where I bought another bottle of Isle of Jura (which the wife enjoys) and a bottle of Sheep Dip, an 8-year-old bottle of scotch which came recommended due to its 'unique' flavor. I'm all about unique. I will shortly update my spreadsheet and edit my previous entry with my findings. Fixed my neighbor's printer between glasses of scotch, read to the children, and put them to bed.

Worked tirelessly on my "Best of 2006" soundtrack CD - adding one of the few title tracks on there, "Long, Long Time Ago" from Pan's Labyrinth which I rec'd in the mail today, deleting one track, and replacing one with another from Casino Royale. I also chose to add a track from the DVD Done The Impossible which wasn't even a released documentary, but did have an accompanying soundtrack. I also decided to add Track 17 "Prelude to War" from Battlestar Galactica Season Two. All this and I'm still only 45 minutes into my 80-minute compilation. I've been working on this for months, re-listening to some scores with a very critical ear. Its exhausting, and I love every minute of it.

I turn into a pumpkin at midnight.

◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: Marco Beltrami - Underworld Evolution

◾ Tags:

2007-02-05 05:21

I love musicals. I love the music. If I had to choose between watching a musical, or listening to a musical, I would likely choose the latter - though sometimes watching a great musical is what leads you to the music. Many people aren't aware that many songs they've heard covered by other artists are from a musical. Well, at least that's how it used to be. The stock answer I get when I ask someone if they enjoy musicals is something along the lines of, "No, people don't just break out into song & dance in real life." Well I'm here to tell you some people do - I do! Probably more often than I should.

My father used to take us kids to the Dallas Summer Music Hall, where we watched on stage the likes of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Brigadoon, Show Boat, and Fiddler on the Roof. Later in life he took us to Ragtime and even Ruddigore. Oh the music and the dancing and the costumes! But all is not well for someone who has a passion for these things. About the only person I can talk to when I get excited about a musical is my father. And we do - and I love him for it. But outside of family...its tough.

I seek these people out. I want to share my love of the musical with someone, and have them be just as excited as I am about it. I want to hear their stories too! And nothing will kill a friendship with a gay man like asking him, "Do you like musicals?" Yes, because that's so very stereotypical, I have to wait an appropriate amount of time. And I'll tell you something else about that - most of them don't! How very disappointing when you can't even rely on stereotypes to further your own agenda.

I grew up watching all the Motion Pictures adapted from the musicals during their heyday. Name it. I've seen it. Everytime we travelled to another city, we'd try to catch a musical put on by a local company. I think we saw The Music Man in Corpus Christi. When kids in my 3rd grade class were bringing 'KISS' to music class, I was bringing my Mikado and Mary Poppins cassettes. What a nerd! What did I know? The only thing playing in the house were scores, classical, musicals & opera. 24x7! What a rich environment to grow up in.

The CD box set of Rogers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma, The Sound of Music, Carousel, and The King and I got me through my European tour. Nothing brings back fonder memories than "The Lonely Goatherd" or "March of the Siamese Children." And who can't burst out in accompaniment when you hear, "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" or "The Surrey With the Fringe on Top?" Of course, this too had its drawbacks. I was at the Base Exchange in Germany and found Mary Poppins. I was quite excited. Can anyone say, "The Life I Lead?" Here's where it gets complicated. I snatched it up, but my wallet was back in my room. I asked my buddy, "Will you pick this up with your checkout and I'll pay you back when we get to my room?" He looked at me, he looked at the disc. He looked at me, "Aw hell no! Here's $10. You get it yourself. I don't want anyone to see me with that!" *le sigh*

Today, I have almost no Gilbert & Sullivan (though I personally consider that opera and I'll save my love for opera for another post) and I don't really care for Sondheim. And there's a lot I don't have...yet. Still, out of all my music, my musicals are probably my most oft-listened to albums over a lifetime of music. Mostly, I enjoy the Original Cast Recordings. There are times I'll prefer an Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - such as with The Pajama Game or the rare instance where I'll require both (Chicago). And to date, there's only one in which I greatly prefer a revival cast, that being the much maligned Annie Get Your Gun with Tom Wopat and Bernadette Peters. Trust me when I tell you I thought I was going to be sick when I heard they were doing it...that is, until I actually heard it. Wow. Wow indeed.

What is it about these jewels which make them so precious to me? I don't know. The magic, I suppose. My favorite Xena: Warrior Princess episode? The musical. My favorite Buffy: Vampire Slayer episode? The musical. Those were so well done I shiver to think of them now! I don't suppose musicals are considered 'high art' like opera (still, very close ties) perhaps due to the risqué lyrics which are often found in musicals. My father explained that they were often the vehicles for bringing issues to light in a public forum, and outside of most of Rogers & Hammerstein's works, that appears to be true. Even today, what with Avenue Q timely social issues are discussed.

RHPS is of course fun, and Grease. But I eagerly await my 1965 Original Cast Recording of Man of La Mancha! My father had that on vinyl and we listened to it ceaselessly. I can't wait. There are so many more. My Fair Lady being in the Top 5. But if I had to choose. Had to, mind you - and I was only allowed one for the rest of my life, well, that's easy - Leonard Bernstein's Candide. But perhaps that's because I feel I'm living in 'the best of all possible worlds!'

◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: Chess

◾ Tags:

2007-01-27 19:08

I caught the last half hour or so of Lady in the Water my wife had recorded from Pay Per View last week. I was so enamored with the score that I listened to the soundtrack day and night for two days. Tonight, I decided to watch the movie in its entirety, and was not disappointed. The characters were very well portrayed and the actors well cast. Paul Giamatti did a particularly good job - something I wasn't quite expecting from him. And M. Night Shyamalan had more than just a cameo in this one; he brought innocence to the part. I've only seen two of his movies. One I greatly enjoyed (The Sixth Sense) and one I did not (Unbreakable.) And though this one was slow-paced, the dialog really made the movie, as did the score. A great score alone can make a mediocre movie into a good one. I use as my single example of this Cutthroat Island in which John Debney's score managed to salvage from B-Movie status for me.

While I may choose to never watch the movie again, the recurring themes (which I so enjoy) were well placed and enhanced my enjoyment of the movie overall. Furthermore, I now have the rise and fall of emotions to accompany the score when I listen to it again.

◾ Current Music: James Newton Howard - Lady In The Water

◾ Tags:

2007-01-07 22:08

Rec'd Terminal Velocity (I've listened to it twice now) and ordered The Pajama Game Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (thanks to

lehah on those two!) and Done The Impossible: The Fans' Tale of Firefly & Serenity score. The former is the first time I've seen anything other than the Original Cast release. In fact, ages ago I created a cassette from the VHS just so I could have it. I mean, the Original Cast is great (many of them recreated their roles for the movie) but some of the songs were downright outstanding on the Soundtrack. Furthermore, its usually the Soundtrack which is missing songs from the stage production, but in this case, I really wanted "There Once Was a Man" which was on the Soundtrack only. The latter isn't sold by Amazon directly, rather a 3rd party with Amazon as a broker. We'll see.

photogoot will arrive in just five short days, and already I'm running low on scotch. Work has decided this MLK holiday (which our client observes as a holiday, and by extension, since we mimic our client's holiday's to afford coverage, we do to) would be a fantastic weekend to work! How fortunate for us! As manager of the department I began a grassroots uprising which was quelled almost immediately. We will be working this weekend. So to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together,

galinda822 and I maneuvered to begin as early as possible Friday until of waiting after hours. We won that petition, which means I'll be able to pick up dear Goot upon his arrival with a zero-wait time. He will literally deplane, pick up his bag, walk out the door where I will be waiting. That being said, we have a rather dull itinerary this visit:

070112 - Game Night w/Galinda & Goot. We'll be dining on IMO's St. Louis Style pizza and playing Reminiscing, a game for people over 30. Probably while drinking local mulled wine and listening to world music.

070113 - Lazy Day. We're going to start out with Buckwheat pancakes & homemade syrup for breakfast. I'm sure the wife will come up with something to keep us entertained. Wife is making a crockpot of vegetable and quinoa stew for the evening meal, so we'll probably have a pretty relaxing day. That evening, with Goot in tow, I'll meet galinda at work to conclude our weekend's activities and Goot will get to meet bigdog_etc, aka, Mr. Cluck!

070114 - Arch Day. I'll fortify us with some vegetable omelettes before we hit the trail to downtown Saint Louis, the Gateway of the Midwest. Armed only with cameras, we'll wind our way through the historical area, taking snaps. Later, galinda has graciously offered to watch the children so my wife can join Goot & I for dinner at the Brewery in Laclede's Landing and some night shots of the Arch. We'll likely drain the remainder of the scotch this day.

070115 - Goot's Prerogative. What Goot wants, Goot gets.

I read to my little ones every night:

113/69 p63

◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: Terminator I, II & III.

◾ Tags:

2006-09-24 15:14

Knowing I didn't have any shoes that wouldn't leave me dead at the end of these 16-hour days I'll be working in D.C., I thought back to the Justin Ropers I used to wear, and wondered if I could find them in a dress brown I could wear with my khacki slacks - and if I could find them in Missouri.

galinda822 suggested, "Chuck's Boots" in Fenton, and as my wife wanted to get out of the house for awhile, I loaded her and the kids up for our excursion.

Chuck's Boots doesn't have a web page, so I took a gamble that they'd be open today. They were (only after 12:00 noon) and I found the most beautiful pair of Justin Ropers I've ever seen - Marbled Chestut. I put them on and felt...Texan. Missed the turn and ended up at the Joyce Meyer Ministries Headquarters to turn around. I used to listen to her a lot; very charismatic speaker. So that was cool. She owns some beautiful property down there.

From there we hit Wal-Mart, where I finally found two of the three "Series Two" BSG die-cast ships, Colonial One and the Raptor. This lends creedance to the fact that people see my blog but don't actually read it, as

celtmanx had purchased these same two for my birthday (he's so sweet) but then didn't send them when he saw the pictures of them on my blog. All I'm missing now is the Viper Mark VII.

Wife wanted Tex-Mex so we stopped at Qdoba Mexican Restaurant. I've finally found my Mexican Mecca, as this was identical to Chipotle minus the really hot salsa, that is. I'm unsure how these people are allowed to even exist, as not only is the menu identical to Chipotle, but the interior of the establishment as well. Damned odd, but I'll take what I can get this far away from Texas.

Stopped at a place called, Slackers and found a veritable goldmine of soundtracks, priced between $3.99 and $7.99 each. I quickly picked out a dozen, then started weighing what I wanted with what I needed. These are the ones I ended up with:

Star Trek Nemesis

Congo

El Cid

American Gigolo

La Femme Nikita

My wife has been on my ass for sometime to get her the score of Congo so that was a good find. I've wanted American Gigolo for ages (again, my father has it on LP), I didn't know anything about La Femme Nikita but I never turn down an Eric Serra score.

lehah was extolling the virtues of Nemesis the other day, and I've never had the full album of El Cid, just highlights on other CD's. All-in-all, a steal. I told the Goth dude behind the counter, "You have an amazing selection of soundtracks."
"Do we? That's cause no one buys them."
*sigh*

While in Slackers I saw a large poster of

drax0r's latest avatar. I couldn't believe it.

◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: Jerry Goldsmith - Star Trek: Nemesis

◾ Tags:

2006-08-18 00:37

I was about two minutes into the title sequence of Ultraviolet when I told my wife, "I already love this score - it could make the movie." Well, it didn't. But boy was I shocked to see that it was written by Klaus Badelt! Now, I'm not going to go so far as to say I despise the man, but up to this point I've pretty much felt he was milktoast, and his association with Hans Zimmer further intensifies this feeling.

However...Zimmer's been growing on me here and there, and I know exactly why. I'm a classical music lover. But there's no 'new' classical music. All the composers are dead. Sure I haven't heard everything, but it becomes rote after 20+ years. Filmscore music on the otherhand, comes out all the time. New stuff. So years ago I bought the soundtrack to Broken Arrow. I think that was my first Zimmer score. Mostly bland, but some good strong recurring themes. I like that in a soundtrack. I heard Broken Arrow in Scream 2 and couldn't believe my ears. Turns out the director liked it so much as the temp track, he included it. Greatly enjoyed Gladiator, but only because it reminded me so strongly of Holst and Wagner.

Fast forward to the mess of scores he's put out lately, and they all seem bland to me again. Some soundtracks are marvelous as standalone scores. You can listen to them day and night without ever having seen the film. They're just fantastic. But what I've noticed with me & Zimmer, is that I usually hate a score of his until I have seen the movie. Then all of a sudden it becomes exciting! I first noticed this with Batman Begins, and more recently with Pirates of the Caribbean II. I'm unsure if its entirely an emotional response of the film triggered by the music, or that its just the score in context. Either way, I'm now a big fan of Pirates.

Now - I've only heard the score once; during the film. But I want it. And cannot find it. Now this doesn't mean I'm going to go all weak-kneed over my other Badelt scores, but I certainly want to give this one another listen!

Which reminds me (and I know I'm opening myself up for ridicule here) but the Ultraviolet score was very reminiscent of Eric Serra's The Fifth Element IMHO - being everything I wish Serra's score would be, but wasn't. I know, I know, Milla Jovovich...what can I say?

◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: Pirates of the Caribbean I & II Soundtrack

◾ Tags:

movies,
music

2006-07-11 20:27

This, from Amazon.com:

Please note that the price of [one of many CD's in my wish] has decreased from $13.99 to $13.98 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

"By Grapthar's Hammer...what a savings."

Wife needed some books from Amazon.com. I used that opportunity to order:

Aliens Soundtrack, Special Edition (Remastered)

The Fly & The Fly II (thanks to lehah's engaging review in filmscore)

Paid for my router I got on eBay on the advice of

unixwolf. Soon, very soon, my Solaris box will be online. I now have a fantastic slackware box I have no use for. I wonder what trouble I can get myself into with it...

Been enjoying the hell outta

leonardii since he's emerged again from the primordial ooze which is Blogger. And I'm thrilled the unixwolf has been more verbose here lately as well. You are the wind beneath my wings.

My dissertation on

swashbuckler332's Sonorous post (an insight to me):

I used to believe that classical music alone should reside on CDs when they were first released. What else could possibly utilize the full-range of this new media? What goes higher and lower and is more layered than classical music?

Of course I was limited in my thinking then, and have come to appreciate much, much, more - but I always fancied myself a music lover rather than an audiophile (an old magazine I used to get delivered from the states to Germany when I was there, CD Review stated once, "A music lover uses his system to show off music, an audiophile uses music to show off his system.") nonetheless I owned an impressive system.

Being overseas and hearing so many people older than me, married with bills, bemoaning their current stereo systems always said, "Someday I'm gonna get..." and I just got sick and tired of that. I never wanted to live in mediocrity. So I hand-chose the best components I could afford, and over time, built a $10,000 system. Now then, being young, (and foolish) I had not factored in what was probably the most important facet of my brilliant plan - this shit was someday going to be old! Alas, I am now a married man (with bills) and one by one, each of my top-of-the-line components have broken beyond repair and I am left with a shadow of my former system. My Bose MediaMate computer speakers lasted 11 years before they gave up the ghost, and they are gone as well now. "Someday, I tell myself...someday." I am now what I once despised.

Truth is, where I am in life right now does not necessitate a system of such grandeur. I don't have the cycles to sit for hours on end any more and listen to entire symphonies. When I moved from Dallas last year I went from a 3-hour daily commute to one lasting approximately 15 minutes. I don't even get to enjoy music in the car like I used to. So I'll get back to where I was once I am able to enjoy it. I'm not bitter...life is funny and I feel sorry for the poor sods who choose not to enjoy it.

Reading your description of the fireworks in Manhattan lead me to express (The reason for the preamble comes to light!) that not even my uber-system could recreate actually sitting in a performance hall feeling each and every one of the instruments in an orchestra performing a full symphony no matter how hard they try. Often, live performances contain errors and errant notes - but that usually matters only on the recording, as the enormity of the experience waxes irrelevant when enjoying in person.

Alas, I don't often go these days - and I'm more likely to want to attend the playing of a score than a classical symphony nowadays. But perhaps that's something I'll get back to when life allows it.

As my responsibilties increase, things which were important to me in the past lose their priority, and I understand that will be a living, breathing, changing thing. If I get to play a game of Monopoly with my wife and kids on a day off - I'll take that any day of the week and twice on Sunday...just know I'll have something instrumental playing softly in the background.

◾ Current Mood: Getting there...
◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: Alien Resurrection

◾ Tags:

2006-06-28 09:13

jesskd26 recently posted that

drax0r should buy her an island.

I support this, and I'll tell you why. I want him to start his own evil empire, and live atop a volcano in an elaborate multi-billion-dollar insane-architect-designed mansion. I'll call him Extreme Chancellor Phallax if that's what he desires, and he can call me, "Number Two." I'll sit at his right hand as we eat wild hog that we hunt with with our newly designed super-secret weapons. I think I really just want to sit on the beach of this island and drive those little 6-wheeled buggies he'll no doubt have to get around on. Maybe we'll finally build that hovercraft out of vaccuum-cleaner parts? I dunno, I just think it would be cool.

Track 17, "Prelude to War" from the BSG: Season 2 soundtrack is my new favorite track. I don't know how I initially missed this gem, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

In researching a user issue today, I found what was probably THE information needed to solve my problem on Google, this link: Acrobat Reader won't launch...in pdf format? *eyeroll*

And if that's not bad enough, I ran across this statement: ...this is the most least likely circumstance, but still possible. Most least...huh?

galinda822 is getting her mac mini today, and I have a short list of items I need to ensure I have on hand:

Power cord for monitor

Cat-5 Patch cord

Cat-5 Crossover cable

Sun Microsystems USB keyboard & mouse

Mousepad

I'm very excited. I already burned her a disc of essential apps and soon she will be online! Now that she's a mac user, I've decided I'm going to stop talking to all non-mac users. As soon as I stated this,

bigdog_etc flipped me off!

And yes, it's been one hell of a day today.

All right, guard, begin the unnecessarily Slow-Moving Dipping Mechanism.

◾ Current Mood: *sigh*
◾ Current Location: 63134
◾ Current Music: Battlestar Galactica: Season Two soundtrack

◾ Tags:

2006-06-26 10:38

Downloaded an ID3 editor to modify the tags on the Independence Day album for the iTunes problem I'm having. It didn't work. Furthermore, even if it had worked, it would have been very tedious to modify everything that needed to be modified. The utility did identify about 3000 duplicates (mostly the reimport of the Final Fantasy album, but because I used the utility to remove the duplicates, I'm sure that's going to wrek havok on my iTunes database. Additionally, the utility identified many tracks which were not in iTunes, but on disk...again, it would be a nightmare to individually identify these tracks to re-import them. I'm beginning to believe iTunes is just not capable of keeping track of as many songs as I have. Next, I'm looking for a utility which will work with iTunes in helping me identify these rouge tracks automatically. Funny enough, the only thing I can find so far works only with iTunes on...Windows *sigh*

Decided to make double-car payments until my car is paid off, then take that money and put it towards my wife's car. I'm figuring I can pay both cars off in about a year. Then save that money for another six months or so and just pay cash for my next car. That'll work...if I stop drinking beer. I think I'll stop drinking beer awhile, see what happens. Of course I was more impressed with that car this morning when I drove my POS into work than at the actual time of driving it...I liked that 3.0 V6.

Finished my part on

galinda822's desk project. This time I brought ALL my tools over, and we got it until it was done. Of course now she's needs a little wood putty and some stain - my work is far from flawless. But I did find that the bigger and more powerful the saw, the easier the job. Is that wrong? It's turning out to be a gorgeous "L" shaped desk, the two pieces fitting flawlessly together. Also, her mini may be arriving two days early - I still have to burn off her applications, but we successfully created a DVD-backup of her entire iTunes database. Speaking of, I'm going to try and clean up what I can tonight, burn some one-off's and delete (do I really need 6GB's of Final Fantasy online?) and then, once properly organized, burn off my entire database, delete the files and all databases, and...*sigh* re-import. Such is my life.

"You're talking about a composer who has established a very identifiable sound that filmmakers have come to rely upon for a successful collaboration of sound and image. It's obviously a very successful approach, and he has maintained a great deal of musical integrity while pursuing that identity, which is no small feat. And I think one would do well to remember that composers of the stature of Haydn and Beethoven were known to sell the same piece of music to different buyers. Making similar accusations against contemporary composers of film who commonly come under extreme conditions of time restraint (among many other real obstacles) might be seen as being irrelevant in light of those historical facts. So, the short answer is: it's just you." -- Don Davis when asked if James Horner's score to Titanic sounded familiar.

Mac user.

◾ Current Mood: meh
◾ Current Location: 63134
◾ Current Music: BSGS2; Da Vinci scores

◾ Tags:

2006-06-24 17:08

Purchased at Best Buy:

Soundtracks

The Great Escape

The Omen (2006)

The Manchurian Candidate

Movies

Stargate

The Godfather Trilogy

Was thrilled to find The Great Escape. All my score purchases were Varese Sarabande's, a label I was completely unfamiliar with until

swashbuckler332 pointed them out to me last month. I was also shocked that of all places, Best Buy was carrying them. The Manchurian Candidate release contains both the 1962 and the 2004 scores, so double bonus for me! (I never saw the 2004 release - I mean, how could it possibly even compare to the 1962 version???) The Omen (2006) is dedicated to Jerry Goldsmith and contains a track entitled 'Omen 76/06' which immediately made me want to listen to The Boys of Brazil which I discover is not only not available, but apparently my dad's LP is worth $100. Wow. I put away three more, one of them being a Klaus Badelt score (who, as a Zimmer understudy and who's work on Pirates I found uninspired, I was a little nervous to spend the $15 on, Nanny McPhee (Patrick Doyle) which I would prefer to hear at least a small preview of first, and Hero - which was the hardest to put back because not only did I greatly enjoy Tan Dun's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but Itzak Perleman plays on this as well (Yo-Yo Ma played on CTHD).

Stargate is the Ultimate Edition, widescreen version (remember the wife wants me to replace my laserdiscs with DVD's) and was priced at an incomprehensible $6.99. A steal as far as I was concerned, but believe it or not, it rang up at $4.99 It boggles the mind.

Boy's been doing real hitting the ball out back. As I don't have a sport-bone in my body, I find this puzzling, but nonetheless want him to enjoy what he does and open up to new things. So today, in lieu of a toy - I got a couple of mitts and a T-Ball (which I discovered just today, is the size of a baseball, but soft). I spent half an hour or so out back today teaching him to catch. I wish my father was as patient with me as I am with him. As I have no expectation of 'pushing' him to any particular goal, I'm hoping he'll have more fun and give us something to do together. Furthermore, a lot of the tricks I learned in actually wearing a mitt and catching a ball, I learned later in life - not at Little League. So I try to impart these things to him to make him more effective. Either way, my goal is to have something to do with the boy, and to have fun doing it. I hope this can be one of those things.

For my own mitt, and given Target's (I hate Target) limited selection, gloves were between $60 (soft, Corinthian leather - think Ricardo Montalban selling Cordoba's) and $20 (hard plastic-like material). Well,

drax0r's seen how long I take to choose. And given the fact I almost couldn't hold a T-Ball in the softball gloves, I settled on a nice, leather, oversized baseball glove (which could easily hold either size ball) for $35. Now I just hope we'll use them.

Drove a 2004 Dodge Stratus R/T. It was very similar to my Sebring, minus all the leather, and with the addition of ground effects and a larger 3.0 litre V6. I asked about the Challenger and was told it would be in showroom floors Fall of '07 and that the base model was priced at $45k. I don't think I'll be buying a Challenger. The Stratus was a little rough on the paint & sunroof, but for an asking price of $15k, I could probably negotiate down closer to $10k. Several factors are involved here, however. My Cav, though I despise it, has never given me a bit of trouble. Ever. My Sebring not so much. This one had 40k miles on it, with a factory warranty of 30k miles still left on it. The Cav's has expired. Furthermore, (once again) I find that even with my very-high credit rating, Missouri interest on used cars is 7%. I WOULDN'T PAY SEVEN PERCENT FOR A CAR IF IT MEANT I HAD TO WALK TO WORK. Sales tax is higher than in Wichita, but lower than in Dallas. Meh. I think I'll just save back my car payments for a year or so once mine are paid off and just pay cash. Like I'll get anything outta the Cav anyway on trade-in.

Maybe I'll watch Stargate tonight...Or perhaps Serenity again, as I've had a hankering.

Today I picked up:

Superman Returns

Prince of Persia Offical Trilogy Soundtrack

Kate Bush: Aerial 2-disc set

The New World (Horner)

The Omen (1976)

X-Men (the first one)

Downloaded the F-Zero 'soundtrack' (heh, SNES)

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly - Expanded Edition

Cabaret

Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift

The Godfather, Part II (to complete my collection)

Wicked (the musical)

Terminator 2

Adding artwork took forever, but Superman Returns gave me goosebumps!

◾ Current Mood: Giddy
◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: All of the below + Brazil soundtrack

◾ Tags:

2006-06-22 22:29

I hate mp3's. I love the technology which brought us MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 technology though and freed us from .wav files. Even though AAC is lossless, and I use mac, I'm ascared to move to it. I have lots of hangups. I keep increasing the bitrate of my rips, but the quality vs. size at some point becomes elusive. I have thousands of CD's and I usually end up listening to my mp3's instead. I hate that about myself. I was looking for a particular European single this evening, and became increasingly frustrated that a good chunk of my hard-earned European singles were now available in mass-produced box sets. While I did eventually find the single I was looking for (it took me an hour) I came across several wonderful singles I thought would be fantastic to have on hand in my mp3 library:

Yello - The Rhythm Divine (Such a GREAT, mellow track. Yello is so underrated here in the states.)

Vangelis - The Conquest of Paradise (think Basil Poledouris's Hymn to Red Oktober vs. Hans Zimmer's Roll Tide.

Siouxsie & The Banshees - Face to Face (from Batman Returns)

Smashing Pumpkins - Disarm (I have their debut stuff, it's good, but not like this.)

Snap - Rhythm is a Dancer (What? I spent some time in Germany!)

Roy Orbison - I Drove All Night (Got to see him live once, but he put out some great new stuff late in his career.)

Roy Orbison - She's A Mystery to Me (more on this below.)

Yaz - State Farm (Who doesn't like Yaz?)

Orbital - The Saint

Book of Love - Modigliani

And the entire Brazil soundtrack by Michael Kamen

Did I mention that I have nearly everything Kate Bush has ever released plus doubles if the European and U.S. releases had different cover art + all the bootlegs she didn't release? You can't take it with you - why do I have so much music? As far as I can tell,

prog_guy69 has more CD's than I do, and probably

swashbuckler332 as well. What is it we so enjoy about it? Let's talk about U2. I'm not a huge fan. I'm not even a mild fan. In fact, I don't even really like them. Let me tell you what I do like - Bono as an individual creative artists. EVERYTHING Bono has put out on the side has moved me in way which would be embarrassing to discuss in a public forum. I cry. It's fantastic. Even when he's singing back-up or duet vocals - I am in awe of the man - his voice and his talent. But I really cannot stand U2. I do not understand this phenomenon.

Didn't get the kids down until 2200 this evening, I've just had a scooby-snack probably too close to bedtime, I'm exhausted and I have a long night tomorrow. After work we're having grilled build-it-yourself pizza's, the other half of the case of Corona we didn't finish last weekend, and Movie Night.

◾ Current Mood: *sigh*
◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: House of Flying Daggers score

◾ Tags:

music

2006-06-16 14:29

If I give my daughter too many kisses, too quickly, she covers her face and says, "Enough kisses for a day!"

Today is a fantastic day for multifaceted reasons. First,

galinda822 is not only in a most unusually playful mood the likes of which I have not experienced before, but it marks the diametrical opposite of her mood yesterday. And as there are only three of us in the office today, yesterday that would have been two few, today it feels just right. I was up late last night blending and creating the graphic for last nights post - yet still managed to get a full eight-hours of sleep. Tonight its a case of Corona and movie night.

We had an excellent discussion on the possible nomenclature of

drax0r's possible new toy...

Masta Rasta Rakka Chakka Stakka

Then debated why Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would fabricate the story of Paul Revere eclipsing the real-life story of Israel Bissel. I won with the following Yiddish adaptation of "Paul Revere's Ride"

Harken me kinder and gimme a listel
Of the miten-tog gezuntel of Israel Bissel,
On the yom of 18, in yortseit of past;
A yungermantshik mount ferd fast!
Nisht do gedacht from da var...

Tonight, I'm firing up the grill, lighting a cigar, wrapping my meat-hooks around an ice cold bottle of Corona, and grilling salmon. I wish you were here.

I'm really enjoying the last track of the new BSG soundtrack, Black Market which is very Marrakesh in tone. It stays with me.

Started whistling tunes from Paint Your Wagon much to the consternation of my staff. Sucks to be them.

So sitting on my Daily Service Review this morning, where the only thing I am required to utter are the words, "Zero Green" severely limits my expression, I instead chose to play this. In the cacophony which followed I was asked to play it again for its humor value, heard something which suggested that it was the epitome of laziness, and applauded for creativity. Lots of different perspectives for two simple words.

celtmanx I do not have your Conan DVD. I've never seen it, and don't have any plans to.

Talked with Tony on the phone today a little bit - that's always fun, and my mother twice, which is almost unprecedented.

◾ Current Mood: w00t!
◾ Current Music: BSG x 3; Firefly; Serenity scores

◾ Tags:

2006-06-14 11:51

There are girls just ripe for some kissin - and I mean to kiss me a few

I don't have any idea why I'm in such a fantastic mood today. Perhaps it was the nine-hours of sleep I got last night? That's a good theory. To better prepare for my 0700 conference call, I made sure the kids were down and I was in bed by 2100. I remember at one point I looked at the clock and was upset it read 10:59 until I closed my eyes and realized I'd been dreaming (I'd had a healthy portion of mozzarella for dinner). Which means sometime between 2100 and 2300, I'd not only fallen asleep, but actually managed to sleep deeply enough to hit REM sleep. Awesome!

Oh, those girls - don't know what they're missin, I've got a lot of living to do

Mostly I've been dancing Christopher Walken-style from the 'Weapon of Choice' video. That is of course when I don't break out into song. I think that most people are just full of horseshit. They say, "Musicals aren't very realistic because people don't just break out into song and start dancing." Aside from the fact that enjoying a musical has NOTHING to do with realism, I find that in my everyday life I do break out into song! Ask anyone who knows me.

And there's wine - all ready for tastin, and there's cadillacs - all shiny and new

This may a little difficult for me to piece together at this juncture, but I'm going to try. I dreamed there was a new movie out. It was the intertwined story of Japanese carjackers driving metallic-orange Japanese coupes, and a group of Texans who were traveling across the state in Conestoga wagons (in traditional garb of that period). What I recall most about this movie other than the stark differences in this cross-genre film, was that the well-known actors did all their own songs (which were remakes of popular songs limited to the West Texas area - I remember thinking at the time, "Poor

drax0r won't be familiar with any of these since he hails from East Texas..."). I remember being moved to tears with emotion everytime these well-known actors began singing their songs. It was beautiful.

Got to move, 'cause time is a wastin' There's such a lot of liv-in' to do!

Mostly I've been soft-shoeing around the office today signing my favorite hits from the likes of Bye Bye Birdie, The Pajama game and Guys and Dolls. I set the coffee maker to start early this morning in preparation of my early morning call and drank 3 full cups of hot, black coffee. I think the euphoria has just lasted all day long. Oh, and the conference call went well - always a plus!

There's music to play, places to go, people to see - everything...for you and me!
Life's a ball, if only you know it - and it's all...just waiting for you!
You're a-live, so go on and show it - there's such a lot of livin' to do!

;)

◾ Current Mood: FANTASTIC!
◾ Current Location: 63134

◾ Tags:

2006-06-12 10:01

Dreamed

galinda822 and my wife were dining together at a steakhouse. I decided I wanted to go, so I jumped out of bed and wrapped myself in the comforter, and walked over to the restaurant. There I am, standing at the "Please wait to be seated" sign wearing nothing but my comforter. The waitress just stared at me, and I walked past her saying, "My party is already here."

Three new BSG toys for my desk have just been announced, I'll submit my own pictures when I get them (this may mean another whirlwind trip to Target in the middle of the day, galinda):

And speaking of BSG, even though I listened to my new soundtrack all weekend, it was not the most conducive of environments in which to actually enjoy music. I did, however, get a good five minutes of listening done on the drive into work this morning (when I had a 75 minute one-way commute, this was never an issue). Allegro so far is my favorite. A mixture of last seasons The Shape of Things to Come & Passacaglia and yet, so very complex. Its hard to explain the emotions that particular piece invokes, and I'm sure its partly where I was in life when the previous two songs were released, the admiration of the complexity in that composition, and the nostalgia of the other two songs...I could never be a composer, but I so enjoy the fruits of their labor. Black Market is unlike anything on the previous two albums - yet very enjoyable (I prefer the scoring over the episode!) but I found I didn't like A Promise to Return as much as I wanted to; especially being a string quartet.

In other news, I nearly deleted Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire from iTunes and snapped my disc in half. I was initially excited to see Patrick Doyle take the reins on this project (I loved Needful Things) but the occasional break in score with the horrid rock tracks intertwined broke my concentration too much to enjoy it. I think I'll delete those tracks, and burn a new disc to replace the one in the jewel-case. *shiver*

Did absolutely nothing Sunday, and it was fantastic. Well, almost absolutely nothing. I did run over to galinda's to work on an ongoing project with her (turn a handmade entertainment center into a desk) but was stopped halfway when I realized I required my circular saw, which is still packed away somewhere. Then I spent several hours on and off deleting a trojan from my XP box which I myself put there. Fun, fun. I ran across an issue I haven't yet solved with my iTunes. I was updating album art (long overdue) and came across an album (Independence Day) that would not 'take' the art. Further investigation revealed that I could change all the other fields, until I went to play them, then they reverted back to the original import information. Other than that, I didn't do anything Sunday. Watched Sci-Fi's Arabian Nights and was pleased to see James Callis (Baltar) playing Prince Ahmed...

◾ Current Mood: Trying to wake up
◾ Current Location: 63134
◾ Current Music: Battlestar Galactica: Season Two soundtrack

◾ Tags:

2006-06-10 15:29

Want to take the kids to see Cars this weekend. Don't know if I'll get a chance. I know the theater will be packed with screaming children, and that will make me angry. And that they'll tag-team me for restroom breaks. Still, I'd love to take them. We downloaded the HD trailers a couple of days ago and watched them over and over.

Once upon a time, during in Air Force days, my roommate had recently gotten married, and his wife's arrival was pending. She would need a car. He needed something cheap. I suggested - just for a test drive, just in case it wasn't as bad as we assumed it was - the Geo Metro. I'm in the back seat, my roommate is driving, and the salesman is in the passenger seat. As we're driving, I ask the gentleman, "What's that on the right front fender?"
He takes a look out the windshield, but doesn't see anything.
I point this time, "That thing protruding from the right fender, what is that?"
He moves and strains to see it, but cannot.
"That metal whip, secured in the fender," I say, "What is it?"
He sees it, and turns to me, confused and answers, "The antenna?"
"Yes!" I proclaim. "That's right!"
The salesman is now looking at me as if I might be retarded.
"What is that for?" I ask him.
Now, pretty much convinced I'm stupid, says very slowly, "The radio?"
"WHAT RADIO!?" I nearly scream, as the car is not equipped with one.
Nice. He didn't buy the car.

Loaded Windows Vista (the Longhorn replacement) on an X1 and will be playing with that all week. Our group test-upgraded to Office 2003 prior to the migration to our users, and I lost my office bar. Office 2003 doesn't have an office bar. I know a lot of people hate the office bar, and many don't use it. I rarely care what "other people" do, or do not do. I liked it. I used it daily. However, in a fantastic turn of events, the Microsoft knowledgebase article written concerning the absence of the office bar in Office 2003 running on XP, (and I quote:)

The Office Shortcut Bar is not available in Microsoft Office 2003. However, you can use the Start menu in Microsoft Windows XP to start an Office program or to open a file or a folder. Additionally, you can use the Quick Launch bar in Windows XP or in Microsoft Windows 2000 to start an Office program or to open a file or a folder.

I wish I could slap someone at Microsoft for releasing that ignorant "Summary." Do they think I'm stupid?

So, sitting in the boardroom yesterday, I notice that my CEO is wearing a pink tie, with a pink shirt? I never would have done that. But he is a very distinguished, powerful man. Today - what the hell, I too show up with pink-on-pink. So far half a dozen people have mentioned to me, "Hey, the CEO wore pink and pink yesterday too..." The king looks like the piss-boy!

galinda822 came over for movie night, and the three of finally watched Office Space. I think I was the only one who enjoyed it, unfortunately. We followed that up with the first half of the mini-series Revelations, a galinda suggestion. It was quite good.

Took the kids to see Cars this morning. I expected the worst, and the wife even tried to talk me out of it. Boy was I surprised. I took a page out of the book of my dad and went to the first showing. There were maybe, 10 other people in there. I couldn't believe it. A nearly empty theater on a weekend opening show. Furthermore (and this really is hard to believe) neither of the children had to go to the bathroom for the duration of the full-two hour movie! And yes, it was good, on many different levels.
( mild spoilers here )

Was drinking my coffee this morning when my wife announces, "Oh, and your CD came in yesterday."
"WHAT! WHAT! WHAT? Hell woman, why didn't you mention this before?"
"I just remembered."
I snatched it out of her hands and ripped it into iTunes, read the liner notes, and made a copy for the car. I've been listening to it all day. it's very good, and as promised, a scan of Bear McCreary's autograph:

Drinking Pilsner Urquell...

◾ Current Music: Battlestar Galactica: Season Two soundtrack

◾ Tags:

2006-06-06 21:11

At the St. Louis zoo this weekend, it was packed. And with people of varying ages and socio-economic backgrounds. Of all the thousands of people there, I was among the few under 40 who didn't have a tattoo. When asked why I don't have a tattoo, I usually explain that that I wanted a way to express my individuality and make me unique. I get odd looks sometimes, because that's why most people do get tattoos. The funny thing is, by doing so, they become the majority, and just like everyone else. Funny how that works.

Picked up Alien Resurrection today.

Grilled perfect salmon for dinner, and had a marvelous Kansan Spatelese with it. I hate questions such as, "If you were stranded on a desert island and could only have one [fill in the blank] for the rest of your life, what would it be?" I hate these because I am such a diverse person, and I know whatever I chose I would eventually become disenchanted with over time. Unlike most people however, I have had enough variety in some things, that I know exactly what I would choose in some catagories.

Havana Monticristo Cigar
Plizner Urquell
a Rhienhessen Spatlese

Picked up two cars from the Cartoon Network's Hot Wheels Acceleracers series, both from Team 'Metal Maniacs' the Hollowback and Rivited:

SWEET! Confirmation at 2228 hours that my Bear McCreary autographed soundtrack is ON IT'S WAY!!! Critics have called his last one (Season One) a score, and this one, an album. Apparently its much richer in depth than his last one. My review of the preview tracks can be found here. I await with eager anticipation.

Thank you again for your order from La-la Land Records

The following items have been shipped to:

ehowton
St. Louis MO 63114 US United States

Name Code Qty Each Options
-----------------------------------------------------------
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA LLLCD1049 1 15.98
SEASON 2
(Shipped)
Subtotal 15.98
Shipping 4.00
Tax 0.00
Total 19.98

This completes your order. Thank you for shopping with us.

The last four days have been tough. I'm hitting the sack early again tonight.

◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: Alien Resurrection; Spaceballs

◾ Tags:

2006-06-05 15:07

I have an immediate need for all four Alien scores, and I have

swashbuckler332 to thank for this. After reading swashbuckler's revisited mix album, it dawned on me I didn't actually own any of the soundtracks! All my Alien music is on Telarc discs - bits and pieces you understand. Thus begins my quest.

Apparently, the first film is out of print. Damn. The horrifically commuted "Alien Trilogy" soundtrack looks like crap, but I did find the 1999 release DVD which contains the full score as a separate audio track on the DVD for under $10 at Amazon. Thanks for the heads up, again, swashbuckler!

The second film comes in a remastered 'second edition' score which I will have to sneak by the wife to purchase, and the third film will be a sneak as well. I figure in a month I might have them all. I can get away with ordering the DVD because I have the middle two films on laserdisc, and she wants me to replace all my laserdiscs with DVD's. THAT'S going to be a chore. I'll probably never get rid of my Matrix laserdisc - one of the final releases on that media.

The fourth film's score is $4 used on Amazon. Wow.

I'm a little obsessive this way, you know.

And I'm now going to go out and purchase Homeworld 2, a game I've never before played, based on THIS alone. If you still don't get it, watch the trailer. Wow. Also, Firefly writer Jane Espenson will be writing an episode for BSG Season Three. Wow again. I don't know how I'm going to be able to contain myself until all this goodness comes to fruition. Click the image for a direct link to the trailer:

Rec'd a nice gift this past weekend,

galinda822 apparently tired of hearing be bitch about not having Office Space to watch with her...bought me the Special Edition release! Woo-hoo; now we're cooking with fire! Perhaps we'll get a chance to watch it together during Friday's Movie Night? Thanks galinda! I'll grill up something special for the occation ;)

◾ Current Location: 63134

◾ Tags:

2006-06-03 20:30

Watched the Blade Trilogy for the first time this weekend.

Un-fux0rd my iTunes database.

Listened to the XM channel 'CineMagic' on and off, and they played some great stuff.

Looked at a $14,000 exercise machine.

Tried to price a street legal Indy car.

Watched almost my first full NASCAR race with my father-in-law (who was asleep on the couch).

I've been trying to challenge or bait This guy, but so far, no luck. He prefers yes/no answers to his sometimes dumb questions.

Took the kids to the St. Louis Zoo. It was a nice day for it, but very crowded, and possibly the worst laid-out I've come across yet.

Previewed the new Superman Returns score here. Very impressed with Tracks 4, 6, 8 & 12 and was dumbfounded by their choice for the Main Title - the original Williams?!?!?

Started Soul Plane and probably won't finish it.

Want to see Adam Sandler & Christopher Walken in Click when it comes out.

Added over 100 Rhapsody songs to my playlist, on some advice I found on lj (Thanks C.) Listened to about a fifth of it so far.

Several of the animals were mating at the zoo, but none as loud as this guy, who was really vocal:

◾ Current Mood: Exhausted to point of failure
◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: Rhapsody

◾ Tags:

2006-05-30 21:32

Long day at work. Came home to more work. My wife and her father had picked up the pantry for the kitchen, and he was waiting for me to get home to help him move everything in and start installing it. Then my daughter locked her bedroom door. It was the master bedroom and had a key lock. I had to punch out the doorknob just to get in her room. I'll have to replace that with a non-locking doorknow tomorrow. So during the electrical part of the kitchen, my father-in-law killed the power to all the computers during the move of the kitchen outlet, which corrrupted my recently moved iTunes database. No problem, I update the shortcuts and...nothing. Busted assed. I estimate I've only lost 10GB of songs. Oh, I still have them on spinning disk, just not in the database. I'm not too happy. I am considering (because I now have the drive space) re-importing EVERYTHING. This could take hours and I'm sure I'll lose my hard-earned and tediously perfect album art. Add to that when the computer rebooted, it brought up my old sc-trans executable which is pointing to the now non-existant iTunes path creating a 40GB log file which filled my primary drive. *sigh* Again, I'm not very happy about all of this, and dreading any course of action I need to take. Even though I have every piece of album art online, it's in quark's gallery - which is offline until I get my firewall in place, which is even more time. I'm exhausted.

Tried a variety of things; moving errant folders into the iTunes folders, 'resetting' my path (which appeared to re-read the database) and 'consolidating' my music, but I think the entire time it was simply working off the corrupted database which does me no good. Furthermore, my new 160GB drive is formatted with FAT-32. How gay is that?

Grrrrr.

One last thing. I've noticed in the past with iTunes, if I select an entire folder to 'Add to Library' as opposed to shift-select'ing them...I sometimes get multiples of the songs. I'll get 26-tracks of a 13-track album. I'm really scared to 'Add to Library' my entire 42GB worth of music because of this. I could be creating more a headache once this operation is complete. And I'm unsure if it will complete the 8-hours I am asleep...

Fsck!

Sometimes bad things happen to good people.

Ok - it's kicked off. 9637 songs x 1 second per song / 60 = ~3 hours. Not too bad I guess. Lost my 'last played' and 'Play Count' too. *sigh* That's how I keep track of what I've listened to and when. I also lose my 'Date Added' which is how I like to keep my playlist arranged. I bet I'm too angry to sleep tonight.

This sucks so bad.

An entire dynasty - lost!

I am so sick and tired of computers. I think I'll...do something else for a living. Digging ditches sounds like fun.

...time passes...

Ok, let's be reasonable. Perhaps, just perhaps - I can recreate the lost 10GB (mostly that Final Fantasy collection) with this new database...extract what was lost from it; reinstate the old database and add to it what I lost. I'm sure that's the next course of action. Now if I just had the time to accomplish all that.

So tired...

To do: Research a good distro of OpenSolaris...

◾ Current Mood: frustrated
◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: It's lost.

◾ Tags:

2006-05-28 08:54

I feel pretty

Setting up the iogear USB Print Server (1-port) is not only a real pain in the ass, it's also apparently, not possible. I only say this because I have followed step-by-step instructions from the website, and cannot get either my XP box, nor my macintosh to print to it. Oh, it can see it, but all print communication is lost. The 'print server' part of it is either retarded, or I am. (Can you say 'dabbling in AppleTalk?')

*sigh*

I'm sure I'll play with it for countless hours before finally giving up.

Oh so pretty

Then, something incredible happened. I was in awe - stunned even. Took me several moments to react again. I went to CompUSA looking for an external drive enclosure. About $60. While I was there I longingly priced 160GB drives, as I was only going to put my old 30GB drive in it. $100. *sigh* $160 for the whole enchilada. I found another section of what I thought were drive enclosures caught my eye. They weren't. They were full external drives. And I found a 7200-rpm 2MB-cache 160GB USB 2.0 external drive for $60. Perfect. Now to migrate my iTunes folder...

I feel pretty and witty and gay

The restrooms at the Casino Queen are state-of-the-art. Well, almost. The automatic soap dispenser didn't (until my hand was clear afer many seconds of a mix of both slow and frantic waving...it spit itself into the basin), the automatic faucet didn't. Then did. Then didn't. And the automatic towel dispenser didn't. Nice. I'm in a multi-million dollar casino with unwashed wet hands. Those things need manual overrides.

And I pity

Set up the pool for the wife and kids (filling with water now) and set Walk the Line PPV for my father-in-law. I'll burn him a DVD. I wanted to see the movie anyway. The kids are staying with them tonight in their RV at the Casino. Am I looking forward to it? Does the Pope run to the rocketship in the woods?

Any girl who isn't me today

Stargate: Been one of my favorite themes since I saw the movie, but up until yesterday, only had a smattering of them across several Telarc discs.

Grilled the most fantastic burgers today. Since the in-laws were going to be here, but we didn't know their schedule, we picked up an 18-pack of 100% angus beef 1/3 pound patties. Today, I pre-heated the grill and threw ALL OF THEM on once it reached 600-degrees. Yeah, there was fire. I turned off the gas and cooked them from the fire of their own fat. They were fantastic.

See the pretty girl in that mirror there?

◾ Current Mood: Tripping the lights fantastic
◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: The Island; Deep Impact; Stargate

◾ Tags:

awe,
grill,
kids,
mac,
music,
wife,
xp

2006-05-27 00:08

Ended up watching Aeon Flux. It was pretty good. I hope Ultraviolet is better. Thought I heard Eric Serra in the score, turns out it was Graeme Revell. Not to shabby. To date, the only Graeme Revell I don't despise is The Saint. I LOVE that one.

Steaks were perfect, spuds were perfect (started them about half an hour before I threw the steaks on) and stir-grilled some snap peas that came out crunchy, but flavorful. Tecate, Carta Blanca, Dos Equis, and Dos Equis Amber throughout. What a wonderful end to the week!

So it looks like a .5 terabyte RAID vault is not quite in the cards. I have something like 3.5GB left on my internal mac drive (st0rage). I do have another anemic 30GB laptop drive which,if coupled with a USB 2.0 enclosure would increase st0rage at least until the vault thing comes to fruition. Yes, the entire internal drive of the mini is iTunes, currently sitting at 34GB.

...sleep...

Picked up the following soundtracks:

Stargate
Over the Hedge
Deep Impact
The Island

Back up your computer, upgrade storage capacity or easily transfer files with this stylish, compact and user-friendly drive. Expand your digital life by storing more photos, videos, music, and files with the LaCie mini drive - the ideal companion hard drive for Mac mini. Its unique 4-corner crown fits seamlessly into the underside of the Mac mini to create a stable, symbiotic harmony. The LaCie mini drive was brilliantly engineered to allow for a natural cooling airflow to move between these two drives for greater heat dissipation. It offers convenient plug & play and ultra-quiet operation. Stack several LaCie mini drives under the Mac mini for additional capacity or use it with any other computer with a FireWire connection.

I gotta admit, I could give a rat's ass about buffer size, arial density, or platter rotation speed. As long my new drive contains symbiotic harmony, I'm good. I'm good.

Watched Batman Begins this afternoon, and I must admit, I really enjoyed it. I found it interesting and engaging. It was well cast, and they did a good job. I also enjoyed the score immensely as an accompaniment to the movie, much more so than standalone. Then later, when my inlaws called as they had arrived in town early - I loaded up the kids and slid behind the wheel of my wife's black Saturn wagon, which felt then and there, like the batmobile! I drove as such. What fun! The sound of the engine in movie was great. And I really enjoyed the pod-racing sound of the engine braking in the turns. Every stunt in that car was real, no CGI for this Batmobile!

Well, I'm yawning, Tony's listening to Stevie Ray Vaughn, David's drinking beer, Carla's already asleep, and Tom is back on crack.

◾ Current Mood: chipper
◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: Batman Begins; Chronicles of Narnia; Stargate scores

◾ Tags:

2006-05-26 14:16

Ya see, me and the Lord have an understanding.

I'd like to welcome

bigdog_etc to our little circle. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you, The Cluckster.

Four fried chickens and a Coke. And some dry white toast.

The wife picked up the sole leftover case from Cinco de Mayo of mixed Mexican beers. Today, after work, after my walk, I will light a cigar, fire up the grill, throw some potatoes on it, and grill a particulary thick cut top sirloin...and drink a beer. I can't wait.

galinda822 will be joining for eats & afterward. Afterward being 'movie night' in the newly reconfigured, rear-surround-where-they're-supposed-to-be, dark and cool dungeon. I don't know yet what we're going to watch, but the top two on my list are Batman Begins and The Last Castle. Neither of the ladies have seen the latter, and only my wife has seen the former. Should be fun no matter what transpires.

I hate Illinois Nazis.

SIP stack, shell map
System PLC
Go, stop, food shop
VOIP

One Timex digital watch, broken. One unused prophylactic. One soiled.

Life goes on.

Your women. I want to buy your women. The little girl, your daughters... sell them to me. Sell me your children.

I have a lot of good music I want to try and listen to this weekend. How much of it actually gets listened to is anyone's guess at this point. And for those of you itching to hear about X3 head over to

swashbuckler332's site for his spoiler-less comments.

Who wants an orange whip? Orange whip? Orange whip? Three orange whips.

Picked up the following soundtracks:

House of Flying Daggers
Indepedance Day
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Backdraft
Crimson Tide

◾ Current Mood: eclectic
◾ Current Location: 63134
◾ Current Music: Rozsa, Steiner, Waxman, Korngold, Herrmann: The Golden Age

◾ Tags:

2006-05-25 22:03

Final Fantasy Advent Children Soundtrack is at times beautiful and melodic. At others, WAY too fast paced for a 2200 entry.

Wife let me sleep in until about 0900. That was awesome. Went to see a man about a kitchen. Price is right - but will require the father-in-law leading the project. Is he game? Home Depot, pick up the boy, lunch at Cancun's Mexican Buffet, Office Depot, Dollar Store, Hobby Lobby, SAM's. Move 32" TV downstairs, move 27" TV upstairs, move couch downstairs, move 'tapestries' downstairs, move & install surround sound downstairs. In the past two weekends I have completely rearranged the house. The basement is now officially the 'Man Room' according to my wife. With only the lamps and the television on - it's the perfect environment for experiencing a movie! Of course there are now nine speakers and three subwoofers in the basement.

Needless to say, I was busy. Looking very forward to going into work tomorrow morning...

/RANDOM THOUGHTS:

My boy asks, "When is grandma going to be here?" My wife said, "Monday." He asks, "How many naps until she's here?" That got me thinking. Perhaps

drax0r should use 'naps' as his unit of time? It only makes sense.

/END RANDOM THOUGHS

Only 19 days until BSG: Season Two soundtrack ships!

In other news,

celtmanx 'remembered' that Tony and I had fabricated

professortom after arguing relentlessly with 'him' for the better part of a week. He's been going back reading posts 'he' made kicking himself now. It's been quite amusing. This is one of the farther-reaching pranks we've ever pulled.

SuperCluck posted anonymously earlier today. Going to have to keep a watch out for him!

Super Cluck is a chicken from outer space, accidentally left on Earth as an egg, and adopted by the kind Mrs. Cluck. Soon after he hatches it becomes evident that Cluck has some unusual attributes--his large size, amazing strength, and ability to fly. Children attracted to "Super Hero" characters will delight in Super Cluck's story. Lloyd's bright watercolor-and-pen illustrations are often more detailed than the usual beginning-to-read fare; many of the chicken coop scenes are delightful. Readers will be awaiting the further adventures of this chick. Meanwhile, Robert and Super Cluck can serve as role models for aspiring young authors.

The funny part about that synopsis, is how closely it relates to my Cluck. I'm pretty sure he's from outer space, and was adopted by Mrs. Cluck. I've also noticed his unusual attribute of large size...

Can't wait for the good news tomorrow

galinda822...

And....it's 2300. Good night all!

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank

celtmanx for all his drunken comments below.

◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: Final Fantasy Advent Children Soundtrack

◾ Tags:

2006-05-24 22:08

My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery.

Chose Batman Begins to be my HQ-mode testing on the Magnavox. Granted, it runs 2:30 (read three DVD's) but I have yet to see it, and when I do...*shivers*

My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet.

I've read quite a bit on the X-Men: The Last Stand score composed by John Powell, and then picked it up, listened to it, ripped it - tar'd it, scp'd it to work, listened to it there - anyway, I have to give this one to

schpydurx, but I do prefer Powell's score to Mr. & Mrs. Smith. There, I've said it. It's just so fantastic. Sorry for giving you grief Tom, you're right - worth having.

My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark.

I'm taking tomorrow off, so I probably won't be as active as usual. Then again, I may be MORE active. Who knows. As soon as the wife found out about my decision, she started in on where we would go and what we would do...

Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy.

Didn't get a chance to grill tonight, but dinner was fantastic nonetheless. Wife had shredded some chicken I grilled a few nights ago and made the most fabulous quesdilla's yet. Ain't nuthin wrong with dat!

The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament.

Did not enjoy Lost as much as I wanted to. I'm new to Michael Giacchino (being introduced to him in The Incredibles) and nothing has come even close to that sound - save MI:3 where I can pick him out every now and again. In a surprising move, Lord of War was excellent, but I've only heard it once now, and require another listen or two before I suggest it.

My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets.

Daisy jumped on my desk while I was sitting here and managed to, in about 4 seconds, power on my Solaris box, rename an avi, bring up the Dashboard, and knock all the Batmobiles off my desk! There's a lot of untapped computing power under that fur. If only I could get her to code.

When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds - pretty standard really.

At the age of twelve I received my first scribe.

Picked up today:

Chronicles of Narnia Soundtrack
Final Fantasy Advent Children Soundtrack

At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles.

Still want on DVD & CD: The Godfather Trilogy. Even I have to admit, my uber-geekdom laserdisc player is getting dated.

There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum... it's breathtaking - I highly suggest you try it.

◾ Current Mood: *you're getting very sleepy*
◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: Mr. & Mrs. Smith; X-Men: The Last Stand; Lost scores

◾ Tags:

2006-05-24 10:43

I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark, When he made Pearl Harbor.

I think my cat Daisy has figured out and understands the HVAC system at the house. This may help should I need repairs in the future. I'm wondering if I could bribe her into replacing my hot-water heater with some canned tuna.

I miss you more then that movie missed the point, And that’s an awful lot girl.

I was up late listening to my new soundtrack - it was blessedly quiet in the house (after the kids went down) and the environment was perfect for doing so. Then my wife walks in from the other room where you couldn't hear it and exclaims that the music is a little loud. "Funny, it wasn't until you came in here." I replied.

And now, now you've gone away, And all I'm trying to say,

My neck is aching today. I either slept on it wrong, or my head has swollen to a massive size due to all the thinking I've been engaged in lately. I just took two Excedrin. Where is the user group file on OSX anyway?

Is Perl Harbor sucked and I miss you.

darwin is unix which isn't really unix, based on BSD which is more like SYS5 now which darwin isn't...My head hurts.

drax0r had a book entitled, "OSX for Unix Geeks" or something to that effect. Perhaps that will show me where the shadow file is, since I know one exists...Oh, and groups is an executable. *sigh*

I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school, He was terrible in that film.

I installed a processor, voltage regulator, and a floppy drive on our new *shudder* Exchange server this morning, then loaded it up with 146GB drives. Wouldn't mind having one of those myself. I seriously need to look into some sort of backup/increased capacity for teh max0r.

I need you like Cuba Gooding needed a bigger part, He's way better than Ben Affleck.

We had a one compresser go out on our Liebert A/C unit. I get a call from Facilities. "Are there any servers you could power off just until we get this compresser replaced?"

Yeah, we have at least a dozen servers running for no reason whatsoever.

And now all I can think about is your smile, And that shitty movie too,

Apparently, they have OSXUserUtils, which adds commandline useradd/userdel/groupadd/groupdel fuctionality; but it appears to be just an emulator to the GUI (which I do not require), includes a 'group' which really isn't used (Uh...) and non-functional with 10.4! Fantastic! What a raging pile of shiite muslim that would be.

Perl Harbor sucked and I miss you.

◾ Current Mood: Pain in the neck...literally!
◾ Current Location: 63134
◾ Current Music: MI:3 score; The Da Vinci Code score

◾ Tags:

2006-05-23 22:50

I go to Target on Tuesday's. I hate Target. Anyway, so I catch every green light there, it's fantastic. Last light I hit is red. I move into the right-turn only behind a semi. He turns right. I watch in amazement how they always manage to clear the obstacles. Then, he doesn't! He runs into a telephone pole! I watch nervously as it sways. I already have the car in reverse. Amazingly, HE DOESN'T STOP! He starts tearing the forward rear axle OFF THE TRUCK! Then - BAM! the tire explodes and I jump in my seat. I've already checked behind me and I'm moving backwards...

As I was leaving I snapped these, as he had pulled his truck in the Target parking lot...

( Destroyed truck and pole pics )

Picked up the following soundtracks today:

Mission: Impossible 3
X-Men: The Last Stand
The Da Vinci Code
Kill Bill Vols. 1&2 (Enhanced)
Lost score

( I'm Batman )

And finally - the new BSG comic preview artwork:

◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: MI:3 score; X-Men: The Last Stand score

◾ Tags:

2006-05-23 10:01

Hello, Peter. What's happening? We need to talk about your TPS reports.

Got the knees filthy on my khackis crawling around on the server room floor yesterday running a cable under the raised floor. And that's why I think its retarded for techs to wear slacks at work.

Yeah. The coversheet. I know, I know. Uh, Bill talked to me about it.

A user submitted a high-priority ticket yesterday: "Can't winzip my 19MB file down to 4MB for emailing." Nice. I laughed my ass off. *eyeroll* Users. Can't live with them, can't shoot them.

Yeah. Uh, did you get that memo?

The emergency temporary replacement server which was supposed to arrive at my house Saturday, arrived Monday. The permanent replacement server also arrived at the office Monday. Sans drives. Excellent. They might as well have shipped a slab of beef for all the good it's doing us.

Yeah. I got the memo. And I understand the policy. The problem is, I just forgot this one time. And I've already taken care of it so it's not even a problem anymore.

galinda822 has never seen Office Space and I feel this is an opportunity to purchase the DVD (I have it on VHS) so she can watch it. I really feel that her life is imcomplete without having seen it. Is this wrong?

Yeah. It's just that we're putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports *before* they go out now. So if you could just remember to do that from now on, that'd be great. All right!

Rec'd some add'l parts for the new server. A proc, a proc voltage regulator, a floppy drive and a single 146GB drive. Perhaps the rest of the parts will arrive tomorrow? Brought The Cluck to my house to help me load the server in the wife's wagon. Once it was unloaded I reported to Facilities that I had parked an unauthorized vehicle in their airspace and was given a permit on the spot.

"PC Load Letter"? What the fuck does that mean?

Still missing six drives. If I get the parts in today, I'll "plug 'n play" everything in today, else I'm sure it can wait until tomorrow! Picked up MI:3 score today - can't wait to give that a listen!!! Now all I need to find is X-Men 3 and I'll be set...

You see Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.

heh - iTunes Music store gives you 30-seconds previews of songs. Track 24 The Last Stand from X-Men: The Last Stand (iTunes asks, "Did you mean X-MAN?") is only 31-seconds long. One free track! w00t!

◾ Current Mood: Overjoyed
◾ Current Location: 63134
◾ Current Music: Star Wars Episodes I,II,III,IV,V & VI scores

◾ Tags:

2006-05-21 18:30

Cancelled my order with Amazon on BSG:Season Two score. Placed an order with La-La-Land Records (the label) who ship 10 days earlier and, autographed by the composer! For all you non-soundtrack types, that would be Bear McCreary, who took over from and worked with Richard Gibbs of the mini-series. What might you expect to hear on this second season album? Here are my notes on the few preview tracks provided:

Remember the documentary of the Galactica by Lucy Lawless? Remember the theme music of the clip they showed? It was the 70's original theme. It's included here on the first track as Colonial Anthem

There's an Allegro on track five which is in the same orchestral style of, and contains some of the same bars as our past favorites The Face of the Shape to Come and Passacaglia.

Track eight, Pegasus at first sounds kinda gay, like 'Endless Love' until I remembered the scene where they first discovered Pegasus and everyone was disembarking onto Galactica; very exciting suddenly as I filled with the emotion of the moment.

Lords of Kobol is the first vocal track (track 9) on the disc and as is all their vocal tracks, in some foreign tongue - but nothing like the mini-series fav To Kiss or Not to Kiss, harder, and with more force. Oh, and electric guitars too. Pretty cool, it was from the episode 'Pegasus' but I couldn't place it.

So Roslin and Adama (track 13) starts off simply with solo synth piano and a solo violin. It adds a couple of acoustic guitars and maybe a cello which crescendo's into something reminiscent of Firefly. Pretty cool.

Prelude to War (track 17) is a very fast-paced piece with violins, snare drums (on nearly all battle themes) and bigger drums. Here Bear goes back to his ethnic drum line but the addition of the snare rolls behind the frantic violins makes it very exciting.

Track 18 (Reuniting the Fleet) is the same Irish-themed track (6) on Season One (A Good Lighter) with the addition of drums, snare, and a bass.

Black Market is a middle-eastern-esque piece which starts with classical guitar and ends with electric guitar and drums. This is the last track, track 23.

I for one, can't wait!

Here's the link for your own copy and to give the preview tracks a listen!

Updated Firefox on teh max0r which fixed the gif viewing issue.

Watched Ultimate Avengers with my son, which was pretty damn good. I wasn't planning on actually paying attention when I put it on for him, but it was great.

Wrote a little script and made a cron entry on xirr to rotate my banner picture on LiveJournal.

Grilled chicken.

galinda822 came for a nice visit.

Mowed the lawn.

Played countless hours of Hot Wheels with my boy.

Brought all primary systems down at J:42 yesterday and swapped the master bedroom and the office. Miraculously, my clock started working again and everything was back up by 1900.

Installed a new MFP for my wife on the XP uber-box, and shared it out only to discover that OSX can only connect to OSX-shared printers. I assume the same can be said for connecting it to teh max0r and trying to connect to it via XP.

For the first time in a month, considering going to be at 2200 so I can be well rested for my day tomorrow. I haven't played DS2 in a week, nor even cracked my new Strategy Guide...

◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: BSG Season Two Score Preview

◾ Tags:

2006-05-14 17:04

The Last Castle is, to me, a drama. It's about people. It's the plot which tells the story. But on the back cover of the DVD, they show the three scenes in which there was 'action.' You see James Gandolfini holding a gun, Robert Redford ducking for cover with an exploding helicopter in the background, and one other explosion still. Not really indicative of the movie, mind you but if some casual passerby were to glance at it, they might think it was an action-packed movie, and that's just gay.

My wife rec'd Munich as a Mother's Day gift. She had expressed interest in seeing it. Why? Because the commerical spots linked the few 'action' shots back-to-back and made it look like a Robert Ludlum movie come to film. Boy was she disapointed. Screw those people trying to make a buck off a lie. I hope to hell that comes back and bites them in the ass - i.e. they would have sold more to those interested in a docu-drama than an action film, but didn't purchase it because of the crap they released as a trailer. "Piracy is STEALING" the new ad's on DVD's say. Guess what else is stealing? Misrepresenting a movie to get people to buy it!

When I bought The Professional on laserdisc, the tagline from a recent review read, "Makes [the movie] Speed look like a walk to grandmother's house." Well, although I enjoyed The Professional much more than Speed, I felt that not only was that an inaccurate assessment of the movie, it was also misleading to those who watched it based on that. Asses.

Watched six P&T:BS episodes today on and off. Nearly caught up. Only six more to go! Yes, I've been hoarding them.

Most non-Texans don't know the difference between grilling, and BBQ'ing. What I do, is grill. I am the grill master! I fire up the grill, turn the heat way up, to say, 700 degrees, slap some meat on it, sear the everlivingshit out of it, close the lid, and lower the temperature, turning usually only once. It comes out, well, perfect. BBQ'ing on the other hand - usually involves some sort of sauce, and very low heat, requiring ceaseless turning of meat, and generous basting. Now, that's not to say I don't BBQ, I just usually prefer grilling. Today, I did both, which was the first time I've BBQ'd at the new place. It was quite an exciting smell, walking out on the back deck and smelling the sauce dripping onto the flash plates. It was a good day for it, as it's been unseasonably cool this past week and into the weekend. High 50's. Could'nt ask for anything better. The wife loved it.

So on my 'friends' page, I subscribe to the BSG RSS feed, which, though a little spammy, has been invaluable in providing me the information I need to know, when I need to know it. For example, those little die-cast toys on my desk? I bought them the day the feed told me they were at Target, and I haven't seen them since! Furthermore, and astro, pay attention, they just told me that Amazon is accepting pre-orders for the Season Two soundtrack! w00t!

Yes, I took that pic, in my own bathtub. Scary isn't it?

◾ Current Mood: content
◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: 1000's Songs from the 80's on iTunes

◾ Tags:

2006-04-16 22:02

Installed a surround sound system in my house...for $57. That was the price of the Logitech X-530 5.1 system at Sam's. Everywhere else they're $75. It came with it's own stereo mini-male to RCA converter, so I took back the $10 worth of parts I picked up at Radio Shack in anticipation of this project. The wife was moaning the entire time, "Why do we have to do this?" And, "I like how it sounds just coming out of the TV." Then I put on The Soprano's and her face lit up and she began nodding at the theme songs pounding out the subwoofer. She likes the new system. Saved some bucks too, doing it this way.

In updating my iTunes database to include the newest Power Rangers: Mystic Force, I ran across the submission by the original composer, Aaron Waters. I played it for my six-year-old, who much prefers it over the rap-song (yo!) the producers chose. Funny, I wonder if they asked any six-year-old's before making their decision. I doubt it.

Replaced my grill. Same make and model as the one I left in Texas. Assembled my second grill in as many years. Tiring. I hate buying things twice. I'll send Dad a Father's Day card letting him know he can keep my old one. He's going to LOVE that.

Unpacked the Krups, cleaned it, and immediately made a demi-tasse of expresso. It's been oh, so long. It was fantastic!

Completed Season One of The Sopranos. Not bad. I've never seen Scarface. I loved Godfather III. Been listening to the soundtrack a lot. The Sinatra and the Main Title mostly. Good stuff.

Currently downloading DVD cover art for my blank cases, as the wife found a Magnavox console DVD recorder for under $100 and I have just under two dozen movies on Tivo awaiting a home. Got a 50-pack of the slim cases at Sam's for something like, 12 bucks, so am having to photoshop the spine to get the title to fit. So far so good. Tony's had issues with his Magnavox, so I'm going to burn off these movies pretty quick hoping if it goes tango-uniform it does so during the first 30-days of use. Other than that, this will make a nice little addition to my collection.

Was sitting here listening to the V for Vendetta score. Pretty good stuff. I've decided I'll wait for it to come out on PPV, Tivo it, then burn it to DVD. Better than the theater!

◾ Current Mood: Gettin' there...
◾ Current Location: 63114
◾ Current Music: Soprano's Soundtrack

◾ Tags:

2006-04-11 10:11

Compiled most of the day on the mac.

Wished I was on my Solaris box.

It's not accessible yet.

It will be once I get my router in place.

Maybe a slackware box would be more fun?

MAYBE I'LL PUT MY SLACKWARE BOX BEHIND M0N0WALL.

Asses.

This would be easier if I were smarter.

I had a spring in my step and a song on my lips yesterday.

Today it was backwards. I stepped on my song and sprung my lips.

I don't know why.

Perhaps...just perhaps, I should drink some Pilzner Urquell tonight.

Yup, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

I only made it through 5 full James Bond albums today.

At five daily, it will take me another three days to listen to them all.

The office is off Friday for Good Friday. I call that a GREAT Friday.

slackware has 136 seeds on torrent. That rocks.

◾ Current Mood: blah
◾ Current Location: 63134
◾ Current Music: James Bond Scores; All of them; Back-to-back

◾ Tags:

2006-03-10 11:15

Am listening to all the Harry Potter Scores and both BSG albums on iTunes in preparation for watching the 4th movie tonight after my back-to-back BSG season ending episodes! My little friend has been in the refrigerator for a week, cooling, waiting the moment I draw him forth and tap him!

Fantastical day at work; busy as usual, actually - but I'm rockin' like Don Dokken today, baby! I am the hot knife in butter today, handling issues in a ballet of decision making. w00t!

Have a call at 1700 to troubleshoot a Board Member's Macintosh iBook. Apparently, he's pulling up everything in Chinese, and our CEO offered his PC Desktop IT Support to fix. Hmmmm.

(2:18:47 PM) Danzigfried: you have the most eccentric collection of ties of any tie-wearer i know...

Have you ever seen a man eat his own head?

◾ Current Mood: Magical!
◾ Current Music: Harry Potter (I, II & III) & BSG (mini-series & season 1)

◾ Tags:

music,
ties

2005-12-19 18:58

The girls counted my gray hairs last night. I verbally heard, "20" before they declared there were too many to count. Nice.

Saturday evening at Galinda's Lori drank half a bottle of Coconut Rum, creating a situation where she was WIDE AWAKE ALL NIGHT. So we stayed up late and watched Scary Movie 2 which turned out to be much better than 3 but not as good as the first one. "What's next?" My wife asks. That lead us to watch Scream, which neither of us had ever seen. "What's next?" She asks after that movie. Scream 2. Finally, at 0300 she announces, "I'm going to bed." At which point she passed out. Frankenfurter stopped by for a visit, which was nice since I hadn't seen him since Thanksgiving. Lori had lunch with him early last week, however.

House hunted the next day and found another one to put a contract on. However, our realtor is in Rome. Hmmmm.

So tonight is (hopefully) 'Sleep Night.' The night we don't do anything but catch up on sleep. I say hopefully, because I've already fielded a call from the on-call blackberry. Speaking of, my blackberry guy needed someone to test his new BEV server. I, uh, volunteered. So now I'm carrying three devices. *sigh*

The kids are on my Dell X1 on the hotel wireless playing on http://pbskids.org/boohbah. Garrett's getting good at the touchpad.

So it looks like we may be getting a couple of Bengal's. One cat looks like a snow-leopard, the other, a tiger (if you're familiar with Bengal's.) astro (of TSS fame) is rescuing what sounds like more than a handful of Bengal Cats and put the word out he was looking to offload what may turn out to be TWO LITTERS of kittens! Lori and I answered for two. Hopefully, we'll have the house by then as this will make 5 cats. Of course there's no guarantee we're going to get Speedbump back :( David may fight me for him.

Drank a metric ton of gin this weekend. Good thing tonic's so inexpensive here. Hell man, liquor's inexpensive here, and no blue laws!

Well, time to put them young'uns to bed...

Sleep Night was a failure. Rec'd an Exeuctive Support call about 2100. User's DSL modem reported a virus, wouldn't let her past the router. Had her run a virus scan. Nothing. Suggested she use Trendmicro. An hour later, she terminated the troubleshooting. It's late, she offered. Grrrrr. I was hungry so I ate turkey...had a scooby-snack, and logged onto AIM.

Also, oddest thing, I heard the soundtrack to Broken Arrow in Scream 2. WTF? When I got home I looked it up. Apparently I wasn't the only one to notice. Wes Craven was using the soundtrack to Broken Arrow as fill music during the filming. Apparently, he liked it so much, he asked for, and was given permission to use it, bumping original score music written by the composer - which really pissed him off! Well, I guess I can't use this now as a trivia question on TSS.

Good night.

Stardate 051220.0907:
I also made my lunch for the next day (which I subsequently left at the hotel this morning). Since the night before was NOT a Sleep Night, and I slept on the pull-out sofa with little girl that night, I was surprised that I felt well-rested when I woke up yesterday morning. Funny thing is, I wasn't. I didn't know this, however, until I jarred awake after a dream of skydivers with beautiful, colorful chutes making landings on a beach...in the middle of a server meeting! So I inadvertently hit snooze 6 times this morning (I remember distinctly hitting it only once) and, taking a page from the blog of jw (of TSS fame), I awoke an hour late. Fortunately, I had showered the night before, so all I had to do was roll into my clothes, slick my hair back, and hit the road. I have a feeling it's going to be one of those days...

◾ Current Mood: Drowsy
◾ Current Music: Zucchero

◾ Tags:

2005-10-23 11:01

Watched "A Life Less Ordinary," "Strictly Ballroom," and "Moulin Rouge" all for the first time. Very good. I give Moulin the nod, however, for production value. Wow.

We all know how I feel about Windows 'help' dialog box. I hates it. It asks you a lot of stupid yes/no questions and at the end announces your problem is something it cannot help you with. To date, Windows 'help' has never been able to answer one of my questions. Well ladies and gentlemen, I have found something which even exceeds the assininity of that. And it's name is 'Mac Help.' When you click on 'Mac Help' they throw you a little flotation device, a little life ring bounces in the task dock, making you feel comfortabale...safe. They've got you taken care of. 'Mac Help' has no goofy yes/no questions. They go right to the meat with pre-loaded FAQ type questions! For example, under Toast Titaninum, "How do I make DVD's from a DiVX file?" Or "How do I make a DVD from a VIDEO_TS folder?" Both of which turn up this answer:

No pages with your search words were found.

Nice.

Deleted a metric ton of rap from my iTunes database this weekend. Also deleted all songs 64kbps and under. I don't have time for that. I hate mp3's. Ok, I did keep a handful of hard to find tracks at 64kbps, but did delete entire albums such as, "Mo Money" (which I didn't even know I had), and "Evita." Over 600 tracks in all. Nice and tidy. Watching "Constatine" now. Pretty boring so far, and I'm only 35 minutes into it.

Ohhh - it was too much to bear, What have I done! I ended up deleting more than a dozen full albums because they were ripped at 64kbps. Ah, it's for the best. I own neraly a third of them and will rip them myself when I get them out of storage - I just can't do poor mp3's!

"Constatine" was kinda dumb. The best thing it could have been was shorter.

Time for a cigar...

It's cold outside. Damn chilly. Perhaps I'll stop writing this silly thing now and settle in with some BSG for the remainder of the evening.

◾ Current Mood: undeterminable
◾ Current Music: Lords of Acid: Voodoo-U & Our Little Secret

◾ Tags:

2005-10-12 22:12

I love gin.

I love my wife and miss her something terrible.

I watched the movie "Soldier's Girl" this evening.

My children are annoying and distress me when I'm near them. Nonetheless I miss them when they are gone.

I am listening to the Telarc release, "Choral Masterpieces" with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Probably under the direction of Robert Shaw.

I can't sleep. I am very sleepy. I am wide awake. I will pay for this in the morning. If I could get away with NOT sleeping tonight, I would.

I need to be in early in the morning.

I have already picked the tie I am going to wear tomorrow.

I cannot believe Richard Penn wanted me for this job.

I'm enjoying my job, but I'm not entirely comfortable in it yet. I'm sure that will come in time.

I have compensated for not being a unix admin by re-doubling my efforts on quark.

I need more disk space on my server.

I want another server up.

I wish Jay would put quark with his servers. It's only 2U!

I wish Tony would bring up osCommerce so I could at least provide Dan Smith with what he wants.

I miss Tony.

I miss my cats. Mleko is integrating into David's household. Speedbump thinks he owns their house.

I will eat steel cut oats for breakfast.

I have not been on my high blood pressure medication for nearly a month.

Houses here are fucking expensive!

These Logitech X-230's are not a poor replacement for my fried Bose.

Bose are overrated anyway.

I always preferred Infinity.

I don't know that Infinity makes multi-media speakers.

I don't know why they wouldn't.

I annoy most people who know me.

The only reason my co-workers tolerate me is because I'm the new manager.

I listen to "The Shape of Things to Come" at least 4 times a day.

I wish my Cavalier had more horsepower.

I'm thankful for my family. Everything I do is for them, even when they don't realize it.

I've thought about becoming Amish. I could really do that.

It was fun living with David and Wendy.

We had a house picked out in Burleson.

I drink a lot of water (when I'm not drinking gin).

I need to urinate.

I have a Sun 711 multi-pack.

I don't know where it is.

I miss Daisy.

I like OSX.

I am no longer functional with XP because I try to use OSX commands.

It makes me look retarded.

◾ Current Mood: sleepy; wide awake
◾ Current Music: Choral Masterpieces - Atlantic Symphony Orchestra; Telarc

◾ Tags:

2005-10-08 16:14

Silence.

The very thing my dear wife so desperately craves...is what keeps me prisoner.

I purchased my Bose MediaMate Multimedia computer speakers from the Nebraska Furniture Mart in 1996 for $250. They have a manufacture date of March 1995 on them, and they went out today. Plunging me into silence. I feel as though I am in solitary confinement. Ah, another thing my wife so desperately craves - solitude. Another prison for me.

It's true that the prices have plummeted on these speakers, now called the Companion 2 and only $99. They might as well be $1000. I no more have a hundred dollars to spend...and if I did, I'd be on my way to Wichita. Not sitting here in the dark, alone, in the silence.

I do have another set of speakers in Wichita, in storage. They suck. Still, what I wouldn't give for having the foresight to have brought them with me. It's been a month since I set foot in Kansas, and I'm ready to go back. Ready to leave St. Louis and hit the open road once again. To travel more than 11 miles at 45 miles per hour. Ready to...fly!

I suppose, as a last resort, I could burn mp3's from iTunes, then play them on my Dream Machine. I had just started Equinox, Part II, the first episode of Voyager Season Six when my audio died. I am at hotel nursing a cold which started around 0100 Friday morning. Was this brought on by the sharp change in weather we've had this week, or lack of proper sleep since my family left? I don't know.

Audio Device: RAW sample output
Playing: calling_sky_captain.ogg
Ogg Vorbis stream: 2 channel, 44100 Hz
Title: Calling Sky Captain
Artist: Shearmur, Edward
Genre: Soundtrack
Date: 2004
Album: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Track number: 04
Assuming raw pcm input filef 03:26.24 (170.9 kbps) Output Buffer 3.1%
LAME version 3.93 (http://www.mp3dev.org/)
Using polyphase lowpass filter, transition band: 18671 Hz - 19205 Hz
Encoding to calling_sky_captain.mp3
Encoding as 44.1 kHz 192 kbps stereo MPEG-1 Layer III (7.3x) qval=2

There are quite a few things that Darwin can do better than Solaris, or shall I say PPC can do better than SPARC? I never could get LAME to do well, anything worthwhile on my Sun boxes. Those of you who run x86 exclusively won't have a clue as to what I am referring to. Suffice it to say, not EVERYTHING just 'works' outta the box on non-x86 architecture where OpenSource software is concerned.

I don't know if I can go a week plunged into silence. I tried unplugging everything and listening via the built-in mac speaker. That was the worst idea I've had in a long time.

My mac mini is slowly degrading. Because of the network set up I have constructed in this hotel, the Operating System cannot gain access to some online functions. The ports required to be opened are blocked and my research thus far has been unsuccessful in determining which ones are required. Software Update is disabled, as are various application optimizers which try to run, but lack the ability to access their online updated definitions. I'm hoping the box lasts another 5 months or so, and that I can restore her to full functionality once I'm free of this kludge.

Then it hits me. I purchased a holder for my cell phone which was ineffective and I was going to take it back to Best Buy. I could use that return to exchange it for some speakers. I'm really in no condition to travel, but what is the alternative?

No one at home when I try to call my wife. They have their own life now. Just have to hold on 6 more days...

Picked up some Logitech X-230 2.1's. They actually sound better than I thought they would. Maybe this weekend won't be so bad after all. Things are starting to look up.

◾ Current Mood: ill
◾ Current Music: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow Soundtrack

◾ Tags:

2005-09-16 21:43

In 1990 I wss living in Germany and for about $10 you could buy a 5-litre gravity-tap mini-keg of German bier. That was the most fantastic thing I'd ever seen. In 1993 I was deployed to MacDill Air Force Base, Flordia for three months, and what to my great surprise did I find on base? 5-litre gravity-tap mini-kegs of German bier. It was $25 but hey - this is really worth living for. I got the Warsteiner; my favorite. I drank it that day. Fast forward 12 years, and here I sit in St. Louis, Missouri, and what do I find in the grocery store for $12? You got it. I picked up the Warsteiner. I love German bier. I'm sure I'll sleep really good tonight.

I have over 4000 songs in my iTunes database, but have only really listened to a small percentage of them (yes, it can track that for you). So tonight, I'm going to start listening to my entire collection. Now, that doesn't mean that I haven't heard them before. In fact, I started with my most well-heard genre, the operas I imported the other night. Let's talk about opera a minute. You people whine and whine that CD's are too expensive. Have you ever priced opera? A good quality full recording is rare to find under $50. But there's oh so much more to consider. Let's say you decide on a piece you want to purchase. You have to consider the label, the conductor, the orchestra, the soprano, and the tenor. And yes, all five can and do very elusively intermix, so you have to put it together like a puzzle. For example. My favorite conductor is Herbert Von Karajan. He has conducted many, many orchestra's but is best known as principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic (in which he was appointed to in 1955 and retained until his death in 1989) which as it turns out pretty much by proxy, I prefer the Berlin Philharmonic - but I'll sometimes purchase them over Karajan with a different orchestra depending on which label it's on (see what I mean about complicated?), unless I'm looking for a specific soprano of course...you get the point anyway. My favorite two labels are Deutsche Grammaphon (who, coincidently records most of the Berlin Philharmonic) and Telarc. Why labels you ask? Their quality. I didn't learn this until 1990, in Germany. SSgt Randy Smith saw my Laserlight collection of Beethoven's Nine Symphony's and just shook his head. They were $3.99 each. He loaned me his $100 Beethoven set (which I later purchased in the UK) and threw my Laserlight collection in the trash!

Listen, I got to tell you. I'm in heaven. I haven't had this amount of beer, this good, in such a long time. I'm going to try to drink it all tonight. AND it's the weekend. I am so tired of not sleeping (admittedly I'm doing better in a queen bed in a cold room than I was in a military cot in an un-airconditioned data center) and I'm so glad I didn't have to press my clothes tonight for the day tomorrow or set my alarm for an hour and a half early so I'd be bright-eyed when speaking to the executives. I'm going to turn off Lotus Notes, turn off my phone, double-check that the A/C is on high, and drop into bed tonight, hopefully catching up on some sleep. I really feel bad for my wife, who was vommited upon at 0445 this morning by my youngest and hasn't slept through the night since I left. "Why are you not coming home this weekend again?" She asked. She is a wonderful, longsuffering woman and I respect her deeply.

[time passes...]

David Eatherly called and we chatted a good long time. I'm now using iTunes to make me a sleepytime mix of mostly New Age music to snooze by. I'm qwfully drunk and this is quite nice. Time for nite-nite...

I adore you all, my readership.

◾ Current Mood: relaxed, very relaxed
◾ Current Music: Various New Age on iTunes

◾ Tags:

2005-09-12 18:30

Saturday:

Arrived in St. Louis. Found my hotel and moved in. It is, probably the worst hotel I've ever stayed at, in what I assume is the worst part of town. Still, they have a kitchenette, and broadband. Well, that's what I was told anyway. It's wireless access. I have no wireless devices. *sigh.* So, I buy a $100 USB network adapter. Yeah, that's what they run, $100. And I have to use windows to get it to work. Only thing is, it doesn't. Well, the device works fine and connects me to the network. Only I don't get assigned an IP address or default gateway. Who thought wireless was a good idea? There is a silver lining in this dark cloud, and that is, for $75 I can bring Daisy here to stay with me the entire 6 months. Now that makes me happy. Of course in certain parts of St. Louis, my Cingular phone joins the Verizon network and tries to prompt me for credit card information. Anyway, back to the internet. Extended Stay America has a 1-800 number they use for IT support. "Guest Tech." I called Canada and utilizing the Netgear Smart Wizard, connected to individual access points with a static IP, DNS and a gateway. All to no avail, as still, I could not even ping the gateway. We were troubleshooting for about half an hour before he realized he couldn't help me. That's usually the way things go with me. Why oh why couldn't they just wire RJ-45 in these rooms? I'm sure when he calls me back, he'll have a solution. After all, I'm using XP, right? Something he did tell me, however, is that I can request a public IP which bypasses their firewall. Now, IF we can get up on their cheesy WAP, that might just be the most exciting thing to happen to me so far during this new adventure...

Two things I forgot to bring with me to STL. Both are devastating and left a burning in the pit of my stomach when I realized it. My humidor, and my ties. $100 later and I'm the proud owner of three new ties. But WTF am I supposed to find a humidor full of cubans here? I'll have to retrieve it when I got to pick up Daisy.

Sunday:

Guest Tech is going to send someone out tomorrow. Two of the longest days of my life without access in a hotel all alone. I think I'll watch a movie. Oh, and the weekend-night girl is back at the front desk! Today I was 'babe.' Yesterday I was 'sweetie' and 'pumpkin.'

Imported all my opera from my now defunct Shoutcast server to iTunes for something to do and listen to. Full opera's of La Boheme, La Traviata, Tosca, and highlight of Wagner's Ring Cycle. Good stuff. Makes me want to go out and buy more. And of course the Doctor was singing La Boheme on the episode of Voyager I watched last night too...

Monday:

Shadowed my boss all day. He's probably tired of looking at me. Didn't really do anything today. Just watched and listened and sat a lot.
Came into the hotel and asked about the internet access. My very next question was going to be, "What time is checkout tomorrow?" However, much to my surprise, they fixed it. I need a stiff drink. banwidthplace.com clocks me at 83.8 kilobits per second. Watchout for Speedy! Maybe I'll just swallow my own tongue.

◾ Current Music: 101 Strings: Charade

◾ Tags:

2005-09-04 08:42

My little power ranger likes to 'Power Up' before riding his electric 4-wheeler all over the property. I feel safer knowing he's out there battling evil.

Concerning the subject of this post, I feel like I've moved in and am fleecing this town. Wife has a library card with a limit of 8 music CD's you can check out daily. I've already ripped my first 8 and am going back today. My only begrudgement is that they are closed during the holiday.

Yes, teh max0r is set up and running in Wichita, but not without a few surprises. First of all, I used the 17" monitor because I was under the impression that teh max0r had a maximum resolution of 1280x1024. Deciding to watch Sin City last night night on the 22" monitor and Bose MediaMate speakers over the exisiting setup at the house, I attached the larger monitor. Apparently, Tony's 17" LCD only has the capacity to display 1280x1024, because teh max0r now allows me to set the resolution as high as 2048x1536! I think I'll use the 22" when I get to St. Louis.

Another surprise is the built-in 56k modem I laughed at when I first got the mini. It's what I'm using now to post to you. A bonus of using my wife's dial-up connection on the wee mac is that she's limited to 28.8 at Remote Location Alpha. Well with the wee mac, I'm getting a whopping 31.2! Booyakasha. After my 3 months with 26.4 AOL dial-up, if I don't get some broadband soon, I'm going to seriously hurt someone. And speaking of broadband...

It looks like our T1 has been terminated. All of our boxes are offline. Details are still sketchy at this point and I'm trying to confirm. At this point I'm using http://retrospective.us to host my images. Thanks Dave!

◾ Current Music: Desert Rose

◾ Tags:

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Date Rape
Incomprehensive
Well done, Mr. Giacchino
I know Kung-Fu
Williams, John Williams
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Hurry to Meet Death Before Your Place is Taken
A Day Without Snow
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iTunes has gained and maintained a reputation for being easy to use...
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Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, don't fail us now.
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The details of my life are quite inconsequential...
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Darwin
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Life Beyond Mere Existance
Hello Darkness my old friend...
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