iPod/reading update

In case you're wondering what's been added to the iPod recently:


Back To Black - Amy Winehouse (highly recommended)

Yours Truly Angry Mob - Kaiser Chiefs

Neon Bible - Arcade Fire

Introducing - Joss Stone

Swinging the Blues Dancing The Ska - Jools Holland and His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra

Dylanesque - Bryan Ferry

The Little Willies (also highly recommended)

LCD Soundsystem

We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank - Modest Mouse


And I'm finally ripping some of my CD collection to mp3s.


As for my literary pursuits, here's what I'm reading now:

Starsky And Hutch

A long overdue post.

Got a great laugh Friday night - was waiting for Bootleg Willy to show, so we could toast his liberation from a hated job. I was talking with one of the regulars there - she asked me where Willy was, and I told her about his new job, and how I had met him at work about 10 years ago. She proceeds to tell me that she had originally thought Willy and I were cops.

A little later I tell this to the bartender, who says, "She isn't the only one. I've had two or three other people ask me the same thing."

:-)

I sent this story to my friend Arlyn, who tagged us with "Starsky And Hutch". Brilliant!

It's been an eventful few weeks since I last posted. We added a second consultant at work, and he's done a good job so far. I'm trying to get him up to speed on the basics there - eventually, the plan is for him to handle the OS side of things, while I transition to application support. It's comforting to know I have backup there now - I can take days off/vacation now.

Wound up dropping nearly $800 on car repairs a few weeks ago. The Cruiser had a stuck brake caliper, so it had to be replaced. Also got the windshield fluid nozzles replaced (they had cracked) and the AC recharged. Of course, we haven't had any warm weather to test the AC with.

Looks like some bad weather on the way here north of Boston. It's drizzling here now, and we're expecting 2-4" of rain this afternoon/tonight. I'd like to make a run into Cambridge to stock up at Trader Joe's. but we'll see.

Dance It Away

Time to catch up, being the unmotivated blogger I am.

First, my dad had some minor surgery Monday - clearing out a blockage in an artery. He'd been complaining about numbness and tingling in his arm, and an MRI finally turned up the culprit. He's home and resting.

G missed a week of school with a bad cold. She recovered in time to perform in a dance competition on Sunday. She and her team received "high silver honors" for their three routines, and so qualify for the nationals at Cape Cod during the summer.

Had big fun at the SlipKid/Jawn P show last Friday night. Met up with my friend Charlemagne from the Noise Board at the local, and got to Avenue C during the Jawn P set. I got to see Shawn do some rapping, then he vacated the stage to let some special guests up. Thought Jawn did a good job; unfortunately, the crowd was more interested in seeing Gary Cherone and his band.

SlipKid put on a great show - best of the three I've seen. They did a greatest hits set, then tackled the concert version of Tommy for the second. Charlemagne was very impressed, as was I. My highlight came during the end of Tommy, when they were doing the "listening to you..." finale. The sound system cut out, so the crowd continued singing with Cherone's encouragement. Just a lot of fun.

Anyway, back to the real world. Trying to get ready at work to bring in a second consultant and we're gradually shifting our email and file systems to Dallas.

Working From Home

Poor G has been laid low with a bad cold....in fact, L. took her to the doctor yesterday as she was displaying some symptoms of mono. Anyway, I'm parking on the couch, a conference call on the speakerphone and blogging. God bless America!

Been spending a lot of time at the datacenter this week...one of the blades has some bad memory and crashed twice. I'll have to go back there tomorrow and swap out the bad DIMMs with some new ones.

Looking forward to tomorrow night...going down to Avenue C in Malden to see my buddy Shawn perform with Jawn P, then stick around for Slip Kid, Gary Cherone's Who tribute band. Slip Kid is doing a "special performance of Tommy", so that should be interesting.

Haven't played any Strat this week....will probably resume over the weekend.

New iPod/1964 strat replay update

Forgot to mention that I broke down and replaced my misplaced iPod nano with a 30GB video iPod. I wound up with digital overspill when trying to load my current iTunes library on it, so i did some judicious pruning and I'm all set for now. I'll have to start setting up some playlists, as it took me forever to scroll through the damned thing while trying to load Quadrophenia during my workout Saturday. :-)

I'm just about at the end of July with my 1964 AL replay on strat-o-matic. The Yanks went through a 7 game losing streak, though they've turned it around a bit lately. They're 6 games behind the Chisox, who are on a 104 wins pace right now.

Failures, Fishtails and Fisticuffs

An alliterative description of my weekend.

I was hoping for a quiet Friday at work to ease into St. Patrick's weekend; alas, the silence was shattered by a 4:15am phone call from work. "The network is down!" I wind up at the datacenter at 6am with a jumbo coffee and 2 muffins. Not to go all IT geek on everyone, but our hosting company pushed out some network patches that our router didn't appreciate, so it went out on strike. I conference with their network team, reboot the router, we're back in business. "Oh boy," I think, "I'll work until 2:30 and call it a day." Uh uh...turns out our network time server was also corrupted and pushed out an October 1994 date to all of our production servers. Long story short, I didn't get out until 5:45 pm...sustained only by coffee, Diet Coke and those muffins.

I should mention here that we had a snowstorm Friday. By the time I got on Rte. 93 to head home, the road was in poor shape. As I headed past Commerce Way, I started skidding to the right. Now, I know you're supposed to steer in the direction of the skid but applying that knowledge in the midst of sliding off the interstate isn't easy. So I whip the steering wheel to the left....straighten....then start whipping to the left twice as fast. I wound up doing a 180, facing backwards. Thank God there wasn't much traffic - no one was within a half-mile of me. I got myself turned around and got home without further mishap.

Finally fired up the snowblower the first time this season Friday night. Spent an hour digging out the homestead and helping out two neighbors. The next morning the kids next door came by @ 8:30 and asked if I wanted the sidewalk shovelled.

"How much?"

"I don't know."

"What kind of businessman are you?"

Turned out I paid them $20 and they did the cut and the driveway to boot. Good job shoveeling and negotiating. :-)

Took L. down to Mexico Lindo for dinner and margaritas Saturday night. had the grilled red snapper which was very good. caught the end of the Georgetown-BC game, then headed down to the local @ 10pm. Bootleg Willy swung by and we had a good time hanging and talking. At closing time, we walked around the corner to have one more at another establishment. Another young crowd, no problems...we're getting ready to go and on the way out we stop to talk to another regular. "Boy, it's been a quiet St. Patrick's Day!"

About a minute later, it started.

Someone brushes by me, then I see 2 knuckleheads wrestling toward the door. They go spilling onto the floor, knocking over a floor lamp in the process. The doorman and owner separate them.

Another minute passes, and two more knuckleheads get into it. Again, they get separated.

Now it's time for the main event. Another knucklehead throws a punch...at a woman. He gets thrown to the ground and is surrounded by 6 or 7 guys, all throwing punches at him. The knucklehead's friends come in to get him off the ground, and it's on. 15-20 guys fighting, 3 or 4 women squared off, people on the periphery throwing cups of beer at the combatants. It was the biggest fight I've seen in years. I finally just shook my head and moved back to the bar, mostly to avoid getting knocked over or hit by a stray punch. By the time we finally left, Willy counted 6 police cruisers on the street in front of the bar.

AI's barroom equation: alcohol + testosterone + youth = strife.

On Sunday I rested.

Brackets

Just finished filling out my brackets for a money pool, and one for fun on the ESPN site. Taking a break from my Strat replay after the Yanks dropped 2 games to the A's....hitting has gone south, with the Mick is something like a 2 for 30 slump. So I'm watching the end of the Twins-Yankees game and relaxing.

Not much more to add, so I bid you good night.