Blog

We caught ‘The Bad Plus’ last night at one of my favorite venues, The Old Town School of Folk Music. Holy crap was that amazing. I’ve been listening to their tunes for the past year or so, and even though their CDs were produced by Tchad Blake, the don’t come anywhere close to demonstrating what the are capable of in a live setting. The played a very tight set, highlighting their most recent project, ‘Suspicious Activity’. Each of the musicians were excellent of their respective instruments, but I’d like to say something about the drummer, David King. ...

Considering the 4.5 billion years of the planet compressed into one earth day: 4:00 am - life begins (single cell organisms) // nothing advances for the next 16 hours 8:30 pm - first sea plants emerge 8:50 pm - first jellyfish and Ediacaran fauna 9:04 pm - trilobites appear 10:00 pm - first land plants 10:05 pm - first land creatures 10:24 pm - carboniferous forests emerge and first winged insects 11:00 pm - dinosaurs 11:38 pm - age of mammals 11:58:47 - humans emerge Relatively speaking, humans have been on the planet for about 77 seconds of a 24 hr day. ...

Deprived of water, the human body decays rapidly; within days the lips vanish (as if amputated), the gums blacken, the nose withers to half its length, and the skin contracts around the eyes to the degree that it becomes impossible to blink. The water we drink has been around since the earth was young. By 3.8 billion years ago the oceans had basically achieved their current volume. Water is incredibly fluid (pun), the molecular bond is strong enough to flow uphill when siphoned and cause pain from a belly flop , but weak enough to separate when diving into a pool. ...

I’ve always had a fascination with science. If I remember back to my Kindergarden years my plan at the time was to become a chemist. I think it was just the cool instruments and lots of dangerous chemicals. I’m about half-way through Bill Bryson’s book A Short History of Nearly Everything and it’s just amazing. I’m sure it’s far too watered down for anyone truly studying the sciences, but the analogies make things a bit more understandable for my feeble brain. ...

The last session of the first day was on ‘Protecting Your Software Investment’. The description of the session follows: “Patching, Security (Internal and External) , Speed of Access, Disaster Preparedness, Data Recovery, Backup Options” I’m a sucker for anything related to disaster recovery and security, so no matter how badly I really wanted to leave so I could go home and pass out in a Nyquil induced haze, I forced myself to attend. I was graciously rewarded with fountains of knowledge. While there was 75 minutes set aside for the presentation, it was drawn out to a painful 24 minutes. ...

So I’ve survived another mind-numbing conference. Powerpoint is certainly the work of the devil, if for no other reason that it is very successful in making learning tedious. Session after session of green text on white templates, with monotonous speakers droning on about topics they care nothing about. I think I actually picked up two useful bits of knowledge that could have taken the sum total of 25 seconds, rather than two days. ...

I think I’ll start taking notes here about resume’s and applying for work. I’ve spend the last week digging through 85+ resumes trying to find competent individuals. This is no fun, and applicants seem to have the express goal of trying to make it harder for me. This makes me mad and makes me not want to hire a single person. I’ve checked into helper monkeys, but they’re to smart to take a sysadmin gig. ...

The current issue of wired magazine arrived the other day (I thought my subscription ran out 5 months ago) with the cover saying something about ‘Remix Now!’. I’ve been hearing how ‘remixing’ is the new buzzword, which makes me quite nauseous. I’m not certain who started this, but it’s an unfortunate terminology. I think of remixing in the audio world, where singles were remixed to increase their playing time for the dance environment. This eventually evolved into increasingly disparate remixes moving further and further away from the original track in question. The mixes would bring in influences from a variety of musics and cultures (Ex. Bill Laswell, Aphex Twin, and dozens of others). But this ‘remixing’ has been around forever; composers often quoted/borrowed/modified from other composes, writers quoted/borrowed/modified the works of other writers. This is nothing new. ...

It was a face I’d seen a thousand times at every Derby I’d ever been to. I saw it, in my head, as the mask of the whiskey gentry–a pretentious mix of booze, failed dreams and a terminal identity crisis; the inevitable result of too much inbreeding in a closed and ignorant culture. - HST The trip went well, aside from a one hour delay b/w boarding and take-off, but we had no connecting flights, so the stress was minimal. We arrived and in short order consumed great amounts of BBQ and deep-fried corn on the cob. The south is always the bastion of healthy consumption. ...

Got to see Wilco again this weekend. The last night of a four night run at the Vic Theatre. All for nights were being taped for a DVD due out this fall. Pretty amazing set list, but the technical issues hurt the momentum a bit. Yep, that is indeed 35 songs. The band looked wiped out when the show ended (8:15 to 11:59). Set List Misunderstood (w/ Horns) Company in My Back The Late Greats Hummingbird At Least That’s What You Said IATTBYH A Shot in the Arm Muzzle of Bees Via Chicago Handshake Drugs Jesus, etc. Say You Miss Me Theologians I’m the Man Who Loves You (w/ Horns) (Break: equipment issues) I’m The Man Who Loves You (take two) Poor Places Wishful Thinking Spiders (Kidsmoke) Sunken Treasure (Break: equipment issues) Political Science Be Not So Fearful Passenger Side Heavy Metal Drummer Comment The Lonely 1 New Madrid I Shall Be Released Someday Soon Far, Far Away California Stars (w/ Horns) Magazine Called Sunset Promising Candyfloss She’s A Jar Hoodoo Voodoo Something in the Air