last night, after a two year absence from the stage, saw the re-emergence of Louisville's own Old Man. It was a great show, with some old classics and new hot ones from the album that's in the offing.

The Rud was much the same as I remember (my band also hasn't had a show in quite some time, and we haven't played the Rud for quite some time besides), but now they've settled on the "back stage," which i think is a major improvement from the "mid" stage. The sound is still mushy as ever. I think the Rud's sound system (or sound guys, i'm not sure which) is better suited for simpler acts, like… well, mainly vocalists, poets, plays, etc. I think you throw some guitars and drums in the mix, and the system has to work beyond it's limits to get the sound out there. Which is not to say that it's bad, just that there's some color to it. I still think the Rud is a great place to play, and a great place to see a show.

so Old Man rocked it out, did a superb job, and i enjoyed it thoroughly. oh, and there was a song with neil on the harmonica, putting the folk into "punk/folk." very cool.

following Old Man was an actual old man, alone on stage with his acoustic, strapless guitar, and his haunting voice and often nonsensical lyrics. i think everyone was pretty much alternately astounded and confounded by the performance. some of the lyrics i couldn't make out, and the ones that i could, well, some didn't seem to make any sense at all, as if they were just words stuck together for no particular reason, others made complete sense, but perhaps the most interesting part was that there was a deepness of emotion behind every lyric. in the end, the only pronouncement i could make was, "it wasn't good, but it was awesome." oh, and i told neil somebody should do a study on the guy, see how his brain works.

most of the rest of the evening was spent hanging out with friends, some of whom i haven't seen in several months. it was good to catch up, hell, it was good just to be around them again. it also gave the prick an opportunity to talk about finally making use of the practice space we've had for a month now. hopefully this week, we'll at least be able to get our stuff moved in, which will act as a catalyst towards getting us to the practice space at least once a week to *use* that stuff. i'm looking forward to it. i'm excited by the idea of a "new beginning" for the band, and have been itching to strum the strings for a while. (i'm a terrible guitar player, if i'm not at practice, i hardly ever touch the thing, except to move it from one spot to another.) if all goes well, perhaps we'll be ready for our resurgence party in 6 months or so.

Technorati Tags: Louisville, Old Man, the Rudyard Kipling, stage, show, sound, band, practice, friends

so, you may or may not have noticed that i'm trying to get back on the horse here, and i think i've had a realization that part of my stumbling block to getting something out, is the feeling that every post should be a big, epic barn-burner. of course, some of the best posts are, but if every post has to be, then, well, i'd have to lead a more interesting life.

as it is, tonight's post, which was going to be about my upcoming trip to the PHP/tek conference in Chi-town in May, is actually going to be about how much i already despise Vista.

I've had the new laptop just over a day now, and already it has bogged down or crashed out at least 6 times. the first being mere moments after first boot-up and running through the initial new-installation setup routines. i swear, for an OS that is supposed to be the most stable windows version yet, this is one touchy little bitch. I have finally managed to divest it of all the crapware that came pre-installed (including MS works, office trial, and other sundries), but i can't for the life of me figure out where to go to uninstall windows mail or windows messenger. on the bonus side, messenger doesn't seem to be starting up on boot, so maybe i don't have to worrry about that anyway.

oh, and you know that Mac ad with the windows security guy standing behind PC asking him to "cancel or allow?" well, i figured it was an exaggeration, but y'know, it really isn't. every damn time i try to load some piece of software (i am trying to setup a new machine, afterall) i have to confirm that yes, i do want this program to run. and heaven forbid if i try to actually administer the computer.

i may not even make it to the point where i have a working system before I strip it and install Linux. i'm already severely annoyed with Vista, and a little sad that MS can get away with putting out such crap, still.

none of this is to say that Mac OSX isn't without its flaws, but hell, at least they can fall back on the whole "we had to migrate from an entirely different architecture" thing.

oh yeah, and one last thing. the entire time i've been typing this, Vista has been trying to restart, after a software installer failed to even launch. and now, i think it's knocked out my router. but then, my router's been a little wishy washy lately anyway, so i can't blame that entirely on Vista. but i'm still suspicious.

Technorati Tags: windows, vista, mac, osx, trouble, crap

extended warranties on electronics and household whatchamacalits, y'know how people often say that they're not worth paying for? well, let me tell you, i just totally got my money's worth today.

a couple and a half years ago, i bought my shiny new lappy from Best Buy. it was an eMachines model—a company who'd fairly recently been purchased by Gateway—and it was the only thing Best Buy had (that was decent) that had the swanktacular new Athlon x64 mobile chip. and it was a decent computer for about a year, with hardly a problem except for the always janky trackpad and the crack prone hinges.

since i had purchased the 3 year super-duper warranty, i sent it in for service (hinges, trackpad). well, after that it was in a pretty much constant state of fucked-uppedness. it would work, but there were always little weird things going on with it. so i sent it back, picked it up, sent it back, picked it up, etc. at least six times in two years.

the beauty of it is, that the extended warranty comes with a "no lemon" policy, where after doing four hardware replacements, they'll give you a new laptop. rumor mill had it that they would do a dollar for dollar replacement, in other words, i could get a brand new lappy that cost up to the same price as my old one. this, understandably, had me a bit excited.

well, after heading out to the store to fact-check the rumors and see a) what they had, and b) what i needed to do/what the process entailed, i discovered that really they just do spec-for-spec replacements. so, i would get a replacement that was closest in features to the old one. of course, since 2.5 years have passed, there are no exactly feature-equivalent laptops available, so i would end up with at least a small upgrade.

resigned to this, i chose one of the lowest featured gateway lappys they had (online), and headed back in to pick it up. the guy i talked to this time was a bit more lenient with the spec-for-spec policy, reading it as a "functional equivalence" kind of thing. he pointed me to a couple laptops—one lesser than the one i'd picked out, and one slightly upgraded—and i of course said i'd take the upgrade.

so now i've got a brand new lappy running one of those fancy intel core 2 duo chips (yeah, i'm back in evil intel land), but now maybe i can get a little mac osx installed on the beast. if not, i'm probably going the ubuntu route (of some flavor), because i had barely gotten Vista booted up before it crashed. in the 45-75 minutes i've been running vista, i've already decided that it may be pretty, but it's slow. you can put a dress on a dog, but in the end, it's still a dog.

oh, and to cap off the good parts of the story, after doing the whole exchange thing and signing up for a new 3-year extended warranty, paris hilton handed me a store credit for the price difference between the old machine and the new one (minus the price of the new warranty). i didn't expect it, but i'm not complaining.

so, don't listen to those people who say the extended warranties aren't worth it. if you need 'em, they can be like gold.

wherein your humble narrator again laments the inevitability of social distance

the wife and i had the pleasure this evening of hanging out with a few old friends, one of whom has recently embarked on a new life adventure in LA la land. again i was reminded of why it is i've chosen these people as close friends, and again i've had some nostalgic pangs for the times when i could just walk into the next room to enjoy wit, share an anecdote, or request advice. i realize, of course, that i've traded up—for someone with whom i can share many of the same things (along with many other things besides–not all of them "dirty", you cretins)

now all my closest friends but one are married (and he's probably not far off), and that has a way of cramping the social style, especially when you get doctors, near-doctors, students, and parents in the mix. schedules are hard enough to work around when you're just you. when there're two of you to consider, well, it quickly spirals out of control. work time, me time, us time, we time… we time nearly always gets the shaft in that arrangement.

i know that there's not a lot that any of us can do about it, so until we're able to be more proactive about it, i'm just planning on enjoying the infrequent times i get with my friends, and looking forward to the times that i can be reminded why i liked them so much in the first place.

Technorati Tags: pleasure, life, time, wife, adventure, inevitability, evening, distance

after 30 something years of perfect vision (in my one good eye, anyway), i realized a year or so ago that I was starting to have trouble focusing, and that things were generally seeming a bit blurry. i first attributed it to the fact that i generally don't get nearly enough sleep, and that these symptoms were worse the less sleep i got. after a time, i realized i was just fooling myself, and after mentioning it enough times, my wife started badgering me to just go get a checkup. knowing my track record with such things, she eventually just set up an appointment for me. thankfully, it turns out the prescription i need for my good eye is very minor. the doc said it was pretty much up to me whether i wanted specs or not, and after some debate, i decided to go ahead and get them.

and actually, i'm kind of amazed at the difference they make. when the doc made up the little test specs from the kit in his desk drawer, the effect seemed kind of minimal. things were a bit sharper and brighter. but with the glasses, it's a much more obvious change. so ultimately, they work better than i expected, and i'm glad i got them.

it's still a little weird seeing myself in them, but sara likes them, so i can live with the weirdness for a little while. the most bizarre thing has been the dearth of comments i've gotten. i expected pretty much everyone to notice and say something, but only a few people have. very strange.