Congrats to Mohammed over at Reggae Source and his wife Ummarah on the birth of their first child, Maaz Ebaad Haque. Raise that boy on roots, Mo!
Archive for May, 2002
Wednesday night, Huyen and I went to the Indigo Girls show at Wolf Trap. I’m not a huge IG fan or anything, yet I’ve been to more of their shows than Half Pint‘s. Maybe it’s because my butt touched Emily’s butt once. Remind me to tell you that story sometime.
In any event, it was a decent show… pretty much par for the course. The opening act, K’s Choice, provided some well constructed Belgian rock for the people. They were a much better opening act than the typical faux-angsty modern folk opening acts. IG themselves put on a good show, as usual. For me, the highlight is always their interaction with the crowd between songs (and when they do “Shame on You”).
One thing I’ve noticed, though, is that I’m hypersensitive to the crowds at shows. There were at least four times I wanted to punch somebody near me in the teeth for being a jackass.
In any event, we had a nice picnic dinner on the lawn and the weather held up, so it was an enjoyable night.
Addendum: I forgot to mention — we also bumped into RodeoRob’s sister at the show.
Medford pupils bid on celebrity treasure
Here’s a story from “back home.” The elementary school I attended has a program in their library (where my mom still volunteers) where they give “media center money” to students for reading books. At the end of the year, they get to bid on items autographed by celebrities of the students’ choosing. It’s a pretty cool way to encourage kids to read. I just wish my mom could have stolen the autographed Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen pictures. They’re so dreamy.
(via the Momster)
This morning I had a dream. I was running down a long, desolate road, trying to get back home (there was a reason, but I forget the earlier parts of the dream) when I came to an area of heavy construction and two large tunnels. The tunnels both had lots of construction equipment inside and neither looked safe to walk through. So I went up to a construction worker and asked her if there was a safe walking path through the tunnels. “Yes,” she replied, “follow me.” I looked at the woman and smiled… “Jo!” I exclaimed. The construction worker was Nancy McKeon.
She grinned back and as she was leading me to the walking path, the dream shifted and she was showing me inside her small townhouse. “Can I ask you something?” I said. “How come you weren’t part of the Facts of Life reunion movie? Were you not able to participate, or did you really not want to?” She said that she wouldn’t have minded, but was at work on another project (probably a Lifetime movie or an off-Broadway play of some sort).
As we sat in the kitchen talking, in walks Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty. I greeted each of them by their Golden Girls names. They all looked very pleased that I remembered the show and I told them I watched them “every night at 11 and 11:30!” I was about to add that it was a weird juxtaposition watching wrestling on Monday nights until 11 and then flipping to the Golden Girls (something Huyen pointed out to me this week), but interrupted myself, “You know, you all haven’t aged a bit in 15 years! You look the same as you did on the show.” Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty looked pleased by this, but Rue McClanahan seemed to be crying near the fridge, depressed with how she had lost the sex appeal of Blanche. I should note, too, that Estelle Getty was in full Sophia gear, playing the grandmotherly role.
I turned back to Jo and told her, “You know, what a sham that reunion movie was. Bringing your freaking daughter back but not you? What were they thinking?” She agreed with me, and then my alarm woke me up. I was bummed—I wanted to ask Rue about being a vegetarian. And, man, I would have loved to sit at the kitchen table, eat cheesecake with the ladies, and then go to the lanai for a drink.
Oh well. Next time. See you in my dreams, ladies.
Last week, I ordered a new PC. This will make our household a three-PC family (1.33 PCs for every person in the house). Granted, one of the PCs is way old (1995) and doesn’t get very much use, but the other two will be networked together in wireless ad hoc glory courtesy of Belkin. Our current PC will become my “studio computer” down in the basement, used mainly for my music while the new PC will be our main computer.
So, are you techies itching to find out my specs? I was carefully considering a Dell but after some deliberation decided to continue with my streak of purchasing custom built computers. I decided to get one from Atlas Micro after seeing some good reviews on Cnet and liking their prices and components. Here’s a rundown of what I got:
- AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53 Ghz)
- MSI 745 Ultra SIS Motherboard
- 256 megs of 333 MHz DDR RAM
- 40 gig Ultra DMA 7200 RPM drive
- Nvidia GeForce 4MX 440 64 meg DDR w/ TV Out video card
- No monitor
- A 16x DVD-ROM drive
- A Plextor 24x10x40 CD writer
- Sound Blaster Audigy w/SB1394 sound card
- Cheap-o network card, keyboard, mouse, etc.
- Atlas 2.1 stereo speakers with subwoofer (these will be secondary speakers as I already have nice ones from my previous computer)
- Windows XP Pro
I won’t mention the price here (drop me an e-mail if you’re interested), but I was amazed that I could get this much power for one third of what I spent for my first computer in 1995.
It’ll be here next week. I’m psyched.
I thought I was a browser geek for getting excited about every incremental release of Opera… but, no… this is the new definition of “browser geek: worldwide Mozilla 1.0 release parties.
Happy Birthday, Katherine!
And note that the only reason I broke out that-name-you-hate-to-be-called in the title is because you’re several hours away from me right now.
Geez — this is some crazy weather. In the last 24 hours, it’s rained heavily for about 18 of them. There were two heavy downfalls of hail and the thunder and lightning went through the night. It all seemed like it was over by 4am, but as I was typing this, the skies opened up again.
I’m really beginning to believe that t-shirt I have from Unamerican:
The Christian Science Monitor presents a decent, but elementary article on DJing (but damn, I hate it when people put quotes around “scratching”). There’s one quote I particuarly like:
“When I was a kid, we spent our time trying to cop [Jimi] Hendrix solos note for note,” [Stephen Webber, who teaches music production at the Berklee School of Music in Boston,] says. “It tickles me that people in my generation playing cover tunes are dissing the DJs because they use prerecorded material.”
That’s exactly what I’ve said for years about sampling.
Heal Your Church Web Site is a blog focused on improving the generally poor state of most church web presences. A very focused goal, and a well-written site. Maybe he’d be willing to do one for restuarants, too? (Katherine)