It’s been almost four years to the day that I started writing on this website, and in that time I’ve switched jobs, been engaged, gotten married (which almost didn’t happen, I love you baby!) and bought a new house. We’ve come a long way since 2001, and I’ve tried to write and photograph about as much of it as I could. For both our birthdays, I decided to finally invest in a commercial weblog application and move into the future. This journal will stay online at this location and be put into archive mode, and I’ll update the links to point to the new domain easily.
For the final name choice, I decided to boost a song title from Soul Coughing and bought www.idiotking.org for my new site. Come on over and join me!
Not that I’m that kind of person, but I took about four hours last night scanning and sharpening forty more wedding photos to post for our scattered family members. Because there are so many of them, ( 82 at last count, 5.8MB worth, and I ain’t done yet) I can’t post them here for fear of the server getting hammered, so if you’re dying to see some, leave me a comment below and I’ll email you the link offline.
New Music. I’ve recently become aware of, and addicted to, a number of audioblogs—sites dedicated to semi-obscure music not given lots of mainstream attention; there are a fewfavorites so far. I also found the audio secion of the Internet Archive, which has a pile of good live recordings by favorite bands such as Soul Coughing and Lake Trout. Check it out.
Random Car Junk. This morning there was a beautiful wine and gold colored Citro‘n 2CV parked in our neighborhood; I didn’t have my camera with me, unfortunately. There was also a blue MGB parked further down the road with a “For Sale” sign in the window—not that we could afford one, but it’s sure nice to dream. Also, our neighbor gave me his folder of records for the Jeep, and something even more valuable: the Haynes repair guide for the Cherokee. Where the Chilton’s books are Cliff’s Notes, the Haynes books are the Expanded Annotated Illustrated King James Bible of repair books (unless you shell out the big bucks for the Chilton’s shop manual.) I read through the first chapter of the Jeep book last night and learned more in five minutes than a week of puzzling over the alternative.
On the list for purchasing this payday: Web Standards Solutions. I’ve been looking for a good book to dive into for getting further into CSS page design (this site will be redesigned soon), and it looks like this might be the one. (via dominey)
So I don’t have enough space on the Powerbook for all the songs I’ve got ripped to MP3. I have the iMac, but it doesn’t have a FireWire port. So Jason suggested that I wipe my iTunes preferences, mount the iMac drive as a volume, and then point iTunes to it as the music library folder. All fine and good…except that the Ratings do not transfer from the remote volume to the Powerbook—which negates the full power of Smart Playlists. So I can go through all 6210+ songs and re-rate each individual one again…or find another way of doing this.
Music of the Day: Red Snapper, Making Bones. Good electronic/live instrumental mixture with some soaring vocals over top, just what I like. Imagine the rythym section of Soul Coughing fronted by N’dea Davenport and somebody throwing keyboards in behind. I have to say, if I was to start a band, I’d hire a drummer and play nothing but upright funk bass.
Random Thoughts. It’s about 30 degrees in Baltimore today, and I can feel it in the finger I broke five years ago (playing football drunk with a friend in Nag’s Head, I caught a pass straight-on with my left ring finger, fracturing both sockets in the middle bone. I did finish the game, though.) Jen is picking up the final groceries for this weekend; my folks are getting into town after noon on Thursday, and we have another pile of food on order from Andy Nelson’s.
Verizon called us this morning to let us know we have DSL connectivity. After a not-so-quick online setup process, I was able to set the SMC Barricade and the Airport Base Station up to provide wireless access throughout the house. Thank God.
Jen braved the fumes yesterday and put a coat of Kilz on the Sticky room walls before she was overcome; I followed her up there with a coat on the cieling and then on the walls in the Anxious room. Both rooms look about a million times better with an even coat of paint. Next, we patch and sand up the cracks in the plaster, pull the baseboards to upgrade the electrical wiring, and seal the trim. Boy, it’s going to suck to paint the whole house with that crap.
In sadder news, this past Monday Renie had to put Bear down for his own good. Everybody say a kind word for the god who watches over dogs.
Stuck in my head this morning (after I forcefully kicked “We’ve Only Just Begun” by the Carpenters to the curb. Don’t ask, because I don’t know how it got in there): “These Are The Reasons”, by Soul Coughing. Not that I even know that’s the name of the song, or what it could be, because the S-C website is offline and the site linked above has no record of this song title.
So sick, it’s wrong. Jen has obviously missed broadband connectivity
badly in the months she’s been out of work. Today I got these
instructions from her: “Do an image
search on Google for Corey Haim and look at the third
picture.” Pardon me now, while I attempt to staunch the
flow of blood from my burning eyesockets.
Richard Benjamin, who now lives in a memory care unit at an assisted living facility, would look forward to the emails and texts, and especially to the ones thanking him for being a true American and patriot when he donated his money. This eventually led him to give about $80,000, leaving him tens of thousands of dollars in debt and his children angry at the campaigns who they say tricked their dad and took advantage of his compromised state of mind.
By all accounts, the recent Jane’s Addiction tour has been canceled after Perry Farrell attacked Dave Navarro in the middle of a song, and had to be dragged off the stage. Reading some first-hand accounts from fans who posted video of that show, the consensus is that the band sounded fantastic but he sounded like shit, was drinking heavily through the whole show, and was dropping verses in the middle of songs. His wife immediately went on social media to attack the band, and today they announced the tour was dead.
Having read about him and his treatment of the rest of the band I can’t say I’m surprised, but I’m bummed out for them. I would love nothing more than (and would, frankly, be more interested in) the three musicians touring together with a guest vocalist, just to hear them play live together.
Wow, I didn’t see this one coming. Oasis are reuniting for a tour after splitting up and throwing chainsaws at each other for fifteen years. I think I’ve always been Team Noel but I haven’t followed all of the drama that closely. This would be a great show to see live, I think; I just can’t rationalize $200 in Ticketmaster surcharges and battling for a 5% chance to actually be able to buy a ticket.
In America, no one is above the law. In America, the people rule.
Super. Apparently AT&T left all of their customer phone numbers, calling and text records, and location data out on a cloud server somewhere, and “criminals” downloaded it. The timespan is from May—October 2022. Guess whose network is AT&T? I submit: the true criminals are the fuckheads at AT&T who continually leave this shit out on cloud servers for anyone to stumble across and download.
Countdown to useless, lawyer-enriching class action lawsuit: 10, 9, 8…