Insignificant Bits

Well, we played a pretty good show at Jaxx last Thursday night; the crowd seemed to dig it. I was said to have been “kicking it on guitar” by the lead singer of the much better band American Sly, who in the end took home the trophy. They are going places.

The nervous moments came during the set of hair band “Turbulance” (yes with the ‘a’ as if one of their names is Lance… and the ‘L’ is a lightning bolt). Paul — not the bass player, but the one mentioned here — yelled “you suck!” after one of their songs. A couple of mustached farm boys decided to do their duty as dedicated fans of the band by investigating the matter further, i.e. trying to find out who said it so they could kick his ass. I talked to the guy a bit and managed to get him to leave us without discovering the perpetrator or causing a ruckus, but part of me wouldn’t have particularly minded if the guilty party had gotten a beatdown.

Anyway, despite not winning and the threat of attack, the show was a blast. I’ll update this with some pictures when I get around to it.

It is officially summer now (finally). Now if we can just keep it that way for a year or two…

Last weekend I went to A-Town for Father’s Day and a family reunion (the Irish side). I flew down Saturday morning and got back Sunday night. While my camera battery was dead during the reunion, I did charge it up before I left to snap a shot of my nephews James and Mark (click for full size):

James talks now, sort of: “Uncle Bob, chips pwease” as he points to the bowl of potato chips, often followed by the verbal indication of pointing, “It’s a clue!” (from Blue’s Clues). The presence of the potato chip stimuli evidently overrides that of all other foods, regardless of proximity or the time of day.

I may be alone in this, but I really enjoy passing time in airports. They are like big sprawling coffee shops that sell beer.

Best airport meal of the trip: Cheez-it snack mix and Minute Maid Cranberry-grape drink.
Worst airport meal of the trip: Charley’s Steakery cheesesteak sandwich and Coke.

So, I lost my keys today. After ten minutes of frantic searching, I eventually located them, where they usually are, under the couch cushions inside the little crevice where the back hits the horizontal part. Ten minutes isn’t much but it was enough to make me miss the last express bus, which equates to another hour spent commuting today.

It got me to thinking about physical key management (and, well, electronic too; I carry my PGP private keys on a USB drive on my key chain). I can’t decide if this is a behavioral problem (I should always put my keys in the same place when I get home) or a technological problem (I need some kind of key finding gizmo). Suggestions from anyone who has tried the latter approach are welcome. To me, it seems the technological approaches are mostly lacking. It goes off when you clap? What happens when you go to see a play? Although there are costly RF receiver versions on the market, the EE in me can’t help but think about how to build my own. The gist is that, with a small RF receiver powered by a watch battery or some such on the keyring, you could use an ordinary RF/X10 remote control, or a computer-based transmitter (similar to my IR transmitter) to initiate the keyring’s locate-me-siren. In all, the project could probably be done for $50 at Radio Shack prices.

So yeah, I’m going to start putting my keys in the same place when I get home.

Last night I mixed down and uploaded a copy of SounDriver’s hit original song, Java on the Terrace. (If you don’t speak ogg vorbis, go to the website and download the mp3.) Now it is time to get the word out (in about the 30th time I’ve plugged this show): we are playing at Jaxx, next Thursday, June 24th @ 7pm ($6). Read the press release.

I ate my second Honey Nut Cheerios and Fake Milk Cereal Bar today. I had given the rest to a coworker but noticed this one lurking in the back of my drawer. Crime against nature.

Yes, people still use QBasic. And yes, I have a reason to be researching QBasic. No, you can’t ask.

Also, WhatTheFont is really cool.

I wish airsnort worked with my wireless card. The Starbucks from which I wrote this lacks an open AP, and apparently everyone else is getting hip to the use of WEP. It’s as if I’m expected to pay to use the internet.

Now that I’ve finally finished book two in the “Baroque Cycle,” The Confusion by Neal Stephenson, I think I can more fully answer ‘s query: Does this ever get interesting? Well, sadly, the answer is no. It has a few good moments; unfortunately most of these are only alluded to by the protagonist as he languishes in the next prison. While Jack doesn’t seem to have a problem getting caught, he does manage to cheat death many times over in nonsensical ways that would make Crichton blush. Also, I am disappointed that the Eliza character hasn’t been gored by ravenous wolves by the close of the novel (which, by the way, is a bizarre deus ex machina and sets up a confrontation between a pirate and Isaac Newton — wtf?). Of course, I will have to read the last book when it comes out.

The mythtv box is going through an upgrade cycle. Since 0.15 finally came out last week, I took the opportunity to switch over to using debian packages for everything. I have to say this release is pretty cool. While there’s nothing wiz-bang fantastic, a few crufty things have been cleaned up, a non-ugly theme ships with the package, and best of all there is, finally, an alternative to screen-scraping Zap2it’s website every night for listings. Zap2it now has a web service that you can subscribe to as long as you periodically give them your demos. Neat. Mythweb now has a configuration for key bindings so they are at last customizable — my fast forward button now does the same thing in MythMusic as in MythTV. On the hardware side: last weekend I removed the VFD which had been stuck displaying “3333333333333″ for some reason, and a case fan that would occasionally be noisy (the replacement, of course, is noisy all the time). So I have a new case fan and some RAM on order. I lost a war to my wallet over plunking down $120+ each for an extra capture card and a MatrixOrbital 4-line LCD panel. Maybe I’ll get them for Hannukah.

I believe there is, at the headquarters of the US Marshals, an arch villain who harbors the secret ambition of controlling the weather, blocking out the sun, and enveloping the earth in perpetual winter. And some careless HR person played right into his hands by placing him in charge of the central A/C.

Informix transactions and the JBoss-download-preventing-web-proxy are on my hitlist today.

So the weekend was nice. I got a haircut, got my leaky tire fixed, and most of all got to spend some time with my better half (I am enjoying the altogether new sensation of having a target for flowers and all of the other sickeningly sweet things you see in Hallmark commercials). Then my parents dropped in yesterday evening on their way to Niagara Falls for their anniversary. We cooked some steaks on the grill that were a little on the well-done side but still tender enough to cut with an ordinary knife, which is good because I can’t find my steak knives. And we watched that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry gets a van and George gets cut loose by his parents and Kramer decides to stop getting mail and Elaine dates The Wiz. Classic.

Forgive the three-days-late reaction. As reported on slapdash, it seems our boy AB of Good Eats, whom I’ve quoted here a few times before, has himself a blog. What’s great about this is that, unlike other PR friendly celeb websites, here he doesn’t seem to mind a few well-deserved potshots: The fact that “Dr.” Phil has the number 1 cookbook on Amazon.com makes me want to end it all.

I think he could take Wheaton in a fight.

I’ve been quiet on this matter until now, but I’m ready to break my silence. There is a disturbing trend that has been growing for the last couple of years: Blue eyeshadow. Iron-on tees. Ashton Kutcher wearing trucker’s hats. Kylie Minogue singing disco numbers in hot pants. Now, the fashion industry has caught on and is selling us ugly striped shirts (yes, I now own one). Please, before this gets any worse, can we return the 70s back to its crypt? Luckily, since I’ve finally noticed it, this fad won’t be around much longer.

Speaking of fads, a thought prompted by hearing Huey Lewis in the News’ “The Heart of Rock-N-Roll” at the gym: the world never tires of songs that name lots of cities in the lyrics. cf. Steve Miller’s “Rock ‘N Me” and, more recently, Petey Pablo’s “Raise up.” There’s a formula in there somewhere.