August 2005 Archives

Gas Miracle

Talking to some folks at work today, Kev mentioned that gas by his house had gone up 40 cents overnight. Being someone who drives over 70 miles a day getting to and from work, I immediately got very nervous. This is going to kill my finances (which are already pretty much in shambles) if I have to pay that much more for gas. On the way home, I stopped by the gas station I usually use to get smokes and saw that their prices had gone up 62 cents over night (if I remember yesterday right and really read the board right). Crap! Even though I didn't REALLY need gas, I figured I should get some if it wasn't too bad, as it will probably be even WORSE next week.

Well, I decided I just was not going to pay that much. So, I jumped on the Mass Pike and headed home. While passing the westbound rest stop (I was going eastbound), my eyes almost popped out of my head when I saw their regular gas was just $2.85 (rather than the $3.29 at my normal place). I was amazed. So, when I hit the eastbound rest stop, I pulled right. Gas was still $2.85. Someone must have been a little slow in telling them to raise their prices. I only needed about half a tank of gas, but even with just 6 gallons, I saved myself like $2.50 by buying gas on the MassPike.

I remember back in the days when the used to severely gouge you on the highways. I know they have passed some laws which restrict how much they can gouge you these days, but seeing gas CHEAPER on the Pike than at a regular gas station blew me away.

Sharon Osbourne shows her true colors

Blabbermouth has an article from Kerrnag! magazine where Sharon Osbourne admits to causing all the problems at Iron Maiden's last performance on Ozzfest:

Sharon Osbourne: "Of course I did. I had the PA turned on and off. And look it's not hard for someone to walk into a diehard Ozzfest crowd and say, 'Who wants to throw an egg at a rock star?' Who wouldn't wanna do that? I went out and bought 50 eggs and me and my daughter had a fucking blast. C'mon, it's rock 'n' roll. No-one died. They'll be waiting a long fucking time for an apology from me."

Since I'm not a nasty person, I won't use a four letter word that starts with a C, but she sure is one. This is the biggest lack of respect I have ever seen from someone.

Someone has started a website, Boycott Sharon, to try and get Sharon to apologize via putting a letter in Billboard. My opinion? Fuck her and her tour. She's made a joke out of Ozzy and her entire family and this is the last straw. I will NEVER go to an Ozzfest or anything which Sharon has any involvement in.

MT 3.2 - Slow?

Anyone else seeing very slow and very BIG mt.cgi processes with MT 3.2? I run this site on a very tiny slow machine, but MT has always worked ok. With this latest release, it seems like MT constantly times out when trying to post (though the post goes through) and I have seen mt.cgi processes with 50 Megabytes of resident memory. That's just NUTS for a perl program that is just supposed to be adding some stuff to a DB. Maybe it' because I am running in a text DB and it's loading the whole thing in? Any ideas/thoughts?

Well Deserved

Yankee Mark

Linux Kernel 2.6.13 is out

Final Week

So, today starts my final week of my 20s. As of next Monday, I am officially 30. I'm still not 100% sure how to react to it. Some days, I really don't care, others I get myself all worried about where I am, where I would like to be, etc. Who knows? I guess we'll see what happens next Monday.

Dream Theater Boston Set List

Just wanted to throw this up there, so I have it for the future.

The Root Of All Evil
Honor Thy Father
Panic Attack
Just Let Me Breathe
Lie
Never Enough
Home

Encore:

As I Am
Pull Me Under

Gigantour - Boston, MA 08/26/2005

Marc drove down from Vermont on Friday afternoon and we headed over to Harborlights (err, the Bank of America Pavillion) to see Gigantour. The one bad thing about the Boston date is that it was a single stage show, so we missed out on Symphony X, Life of Agony and some others.

When we got there, Nevermore was on the stage. I ended up bumping in to some folks and didn't really pay much attention to them. Next up was Dillinger Escape Plan. I had heard a number of good things about these guys coming in to this show, so I was somewhat psyched to see them. Sadly, they totally disappointed. There were a couple of times when I thought they may start doing something good, but mostly it was a lot of screaming and jumping around.

The next band on the stage was Fear Factory, who I was very excited to see. For some reason, I thought all the original members were back, but it was very obvious that Dino was not on the stage. He is very, ummm, noticable :) Doing some research after the show, it turns out three original members got back together, with the bass player moving to guitar and then they added a new bassist. I have to say, I was disappointed with their set. What I've heard of their new album, I have been less than impressed with and it didn't really get any better live. The worst part of their set was when they started off doing Pantera's Walk and then stopped and the singer said something like "We miss you Dimebag" or something. Rather weak.

Next up was the real reason I was at this show, Dream Theater. Marc and I actually headed to our seats for this set. We were in like the 10th row, right below the speakers, so it was VERY loud. Their set was pretty good. Too much of the newer stuff for my tastes. I would have like to have heard a little more old stuff. More because I know it better than anything else. They did seem to be having a lot of fun up on the stage. The most amusing part of the evening came during their set. As we were standing in our seats, Mike and John P's wives, along with what seemed like about a dozen kids and another woman I didn't recognize were 2 rows in front of us. The kids cracked me up waving to their dad's up on stage. John even waved back at one point. Marlene left and a few minutes later, Max was crawling around on the drum kit taking pictures of Mike. If you noticed Mike looking down or back during the set, he was hamming it up for his kids. Overall, they sounded ok, too loud where I was, but ok. I'll be patiently waiting for a US "Evening With" tour, so I can hear a lot more than a 75 min set.

After DT, we headed back to the back to hang out and watch the headliner Megadeth. Overall, they put on a good show. The sound didn't sound great from the back, but that may have been because my ear drums were a bit blown out from DT. Heard some good older stuff mixed in with a bunch of the newer stuff. Marc and I were laughing our asses off about the large amount of pyro and explosions :) The comment of the night came from Matt from Event when at the end when the raining sparks pyro happened. Matt said, "Now it's a Poison show".

Overall, I enjoyed myself. I think I would have enjoyed a DT show more, but it was a good time. Good to see some friends I haven't seen in a while as well.

Upgrade Complete

Upgraded to MT 3.2 today. So far so good.

MT 3.2 is out

Movable Type - News - Announcing Movable Type 3.2

I guess it's time to upgrade again.

Proof that nagging is good sometimes

Marc is bloggin again. :)

Summer of Code

Google's Summer of Code comes to a close next week (9/1) and I just saw these screen captures of one person's work. That looks like it will be an awesome feature.

I spent a little time after seeing these looking at some of the Summer of Code proposals and what was accepted. Seems like there is a lot of good ideas out there for these projects, but I feel I haven't heard a lot about them while they were being developed. Maybe these people don't get aggregated to the right planets or something. I'm hoping next week we'll see a flood of new code and start seeing some of this great work.

Competitors Helping Microsoft

Danah has an excellent post about MS competitors who then turn around and develop their products for Windows only. Definitely an interesting read.

Yeah, I guess I'm back

Yeah, so I'm back. Been here since Friday. Didn't leave the couch except to go see the kids play on Friday and Saturday.

Eased myself back in to work today and started to catch up on household tasks, like shopping, cleaning, paying bills, etc.

Got a busy rest of the month coming up.

Start with this coming weekend being Gasman's last weekend in Boston and it's also his birthday, I think a drink or 20 will be involved.

Next weekend is Gigantour. Will be good to see Dream Theater, as I haven't seen them in a few years.

Also on the tip for next weekend is Brier's bachelor party. Sounds like we have an awesome day planned, so I'm psyched for it.

I SO need one of these

Off to LinuxWorld

I'm off to LinuxWorld in San Francico tomorrow afternoon. Looking forwawrd to a nice week in San Francisco. Sadly, I'm not stayin at the Palomar like I usually do :( We'll be showing off the BladeFrame in the AMD, Intel and Novell booths. We also have a talk scheduled at the Red Hat booth on Tuesday afternoon.

This show has gotten more and more business focused over the last few years. The first year I went (2002), it was still kind of geek/student filled. Now, it's lots of suits. This is actually a more enjoyable format for me as we can't sell equipment to students, they can't sign million dollar POs :)

I am glad to be headed out on Sunday, it will give me an extra day to adjust to the time change. I still hate it. Especially with a week in one place. You get used to the new time zone and then have to switch again. I really don't understand how folks like Joi switch time zones all the time, it would drive me batty.

Well, if you are in the SF area, let me know and we'll grab a drink this week :)

Other Banks in Boston?

So, I'm pretty much fed up with the "Higher Standards" of Bank of America. They fucked me over enough since the switch over that I need to find a new bank. So, my second banking question of the day is, how are the rest? From the top of my head, I figure we have:

  • Citizens Bank
  • Soveriegn Bank
  • TD Banknorth

What do people think of these three? The TD Banknorth totally free checking thing sounds pretty good to me, but they are new to the area, so not sure how they are from any friends experience.

My other option is to open a checking account with the credit union I am in. The only downfall there is that the credit union is down on Long Island.

Thoughts?

ING Direct Orange Savings Account

Anyone gotten one of these Orange Savings Accounts from ING Direct? It seems like a good deal and getting a savings account started is probably a good idea. Any opinions good or bad?

What a difference a weekend makes

I was at Friday's Red Sox game (front row baby!) and was completely not surprised by the reaction to Manny. I totally understand Manny being Manny, but the last few days had been ridiculous. The boos did die down some as the game went on, but I found it very amusing.

Last night, I flip on the TV. Game was in the 7th, two on, one out, Manny steps out and what happens? Crowd goes bonkers all cheering for Manny, even to the point of chanting his name.

I guess his gangsta comment worked well :)

Vegoose Initial Artist Lineup

Holy Shnikes Batman

  • Dave Matthews & Friends
  • Jack Johnson
  • Widespread Panic
  • Phil Lesh & Friends w/ special guest Ryan Adams
  • The Meters (Art Neville, Zigaboo Modeliste,George Porter, Jr., Leo Nocentelli)
  • Trey Anastasio
  • The Flaming Lips
  • The String Cheese Incident
  • Primus
  • Ween
  • The Shins
  • moe.
  • Spoon
  • Gov't Mule
  • Digable Planets
  • North Mississippi Allstars
  • Michael Franti & Spearhead
  • The Decemberists
  • Atmosphere
  • Blackalicious
  • The Magic Numbers
  • Lyrics Born

And don't forget, this doesn't include the late night shows.

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