Month: January 2006

So last night I’m sitting at my desk listening to some Groove Salad and I notice the music is sounding just awesome. Like, it sounds so much better than it ever has. I’m really enjoying it and I can’t figure out what the deal is.

Then I realized I had dropped 2 tabs of strong acid a few hours before and it was really coming on strong.

Okay, not really.

What I realized is that at some point during the day iTunes had gotten switched into it’s new Multiple Speaker mode and the music was coming from my laptop (with it’s shitty little speaker) and my stereo (with it’s giant awesome speakers) at the same time. I normally play my music through my stereo but because of how huge the speakers are they are both to the right of my desk and I don’t get any stereo seperation. Now I was getting mids and highs from my left side on the laptop and lots of lows, mids and highs from my right side on the stereo.
So I messed with the volume on the stereo and laptop a little bit and eventually got it to where I absolutely could not tell where the sound was coming from when I was sitting in my computer chair.

You’d think that someone who spent as much time listening to music as I do would have done something like this years ago but it just never came to mind. Now my mind is awash with buying dozens of Airport Expresseseses and putting speakers all over my house synchronized to the same source. Man, that would kick ass. Normally when I am working elsewhere in the house I turn up my bedroom stereo (We’ll take it slowwwww) to deafening levels so I can hear it wherever I am. It would sure be nice if there were just speakers strategically placed about every 2 feet in the house.

I think this post stopped having a point about two paragraphs ago. I’m just bored. But hey, hooray for iTunes Multiple Speakers support. It’s hot.

Oh, there was another thing.

You know the old thingy “Build a better mousetrap”? Saying, or whatever… Anyway, I decided I can do it. I’ve studied the wily house mouse and I know his ways, and his weaknesses. If you’d like to get in on the ground floor of this venture please send checks with lots of zeros after non-zeros and we’ll work something out.

Shit, “The Call of Ktulu” just came on.

Dual meaning blog title! So subversive! Mystery! Intrigue!

Just call me double oh nuffin’.

Adam is a big fan of Supersystem and along a week or so ago he mentioned they were playing in St. Louis on Wednesday the 11th. He kinda jokingly asked me if I wanted to go and I pretty seriously said yes. Then he asked Tricia if she wanted to go when we went skiing last week and it was on like, as my friend Tony says, Donkey Kong.

So Wednesday I bailed from work a little earlyish, loaded up my precious and hit the damn highway for some high speed shenanigans. After a brief Subway detour and the late afternoon downtown traffic I set the controls for the heart of the sun (and the cruise control to 89) and pointed it east. We rolled into St. Louis right around 8pm and quickly found the bar and a hotel. Turned out there was a reasonably priced hotel right next door to the bar so we got a room there. Bonus!

The show was excellent, the bar was very cool, the bands were great and the PBR flowed like PBR. Adam drank pitcher after pitcher of the stuff while Tricia and I pounded Redbull and vodka interspersed with PBR. After the show we hung around chatting with the bartender till they kicked us out. We were the last to leave. We had been told to head next door where there was a bar open till 3am so off we went.

The bar was indeed open till 3am and full of just the kinda people you need when you are drunk and it’s late. We met the tall, shady country singer who had apparently lost everything and was just happy to be alive. He told me in the bathroom that he had wrecked his car in some horrible accident and so on. Later on he tried to get us (and by us I mean Tricia, really) to go out to his car and smoke a joint. I’m assuming he had his wrecked car towed there on a flat bed. We also met Neil who I think of as a lost and lonely puppy dog. I don’t remember the details but I think we met him when I told him I was going to kick his ass. He had said something that pissed me off. I have no idea what. It could have been “Hi!” He turned out to be a really nice guy and I bought him a shot. His choice. He ordered Jameson’s. Whiskey on top of Redbull, vodka, PBR and Bluemoon. Oh yea, that hurt.

When that bar finally kicked us out we stumbled on over towards our hotel. We got to the door, turned around and Neil was with us. I don’t remember if he said anything to the effect but he definitely wanted to join us. We gently scraped him off and headed upstairs where the real fun started. And by fun I mean vomiting.

I’ll spare you most of the details, but this wouldn’t be the blog you know and love if I didn’t tell you that Adam threw up all night. It was great. Let me just say that if you ever stay at the Cheshire Inn and Lodge in room 211… don’t use the ice bucket.

I herded my damaged charges into the car the next morning and we headed west. Made pretty good time and everyone got home with everything intact. Great trip!

Friday I was mostly recovered and I managed to convince Jono to go skiing with me. I had a quick bite with Adam and JoLynn at Tanners before running home to meet Jono. Snow Creek and the “snow” was flying. We had both decided to try to learn how to snow board. Both our first times. After some histrionics with boots and boards we got on the snow and proceeded to fall down a lot. I made it down the hill thrice before I slammed my shoulder into the ground at about Mach 3. Something ripped, or broke, or something and now I’m an invalid.

Jono did a lot better. He stuck with it for a while longer while I traded my board for skis. I practiced up for a while and eventually Jono got some skis so we skied for the rest of the night. Bailed out of there around 2:30am cold, sore, in pain but satisfied with a job well done.

Saturday I pretty much did nothing but sleep in preparation for what I expected to be a hard night. I had plans to go out with Adam, JoLynn, Tricia, Cristin (sp?) and Steve for a nice dinner and some kickin’ it. I had done a little shopping Friday so I was eager to test out some new clothes. I’m not normally one to brag (much) but I was thinking I looked pretty damn good. We had a glass of wine at JoLynn’s and then Adam drove us over to PF Changs on the Plaza. Adam was still recovering from Wednesday so he had offered to be DD for the night. A decision he probably regrets.

Dinner was excellent. The food was awesome, good conversation, plenty of saki and lots of fun. After dinner we tried to come up with something to do and ended up at the upstairs bar at Brio. Maybe if I hadn’t had such a rough week, and I wasn’t in pain it would have been better for me but I just didn’t have a very good time. I was uncomfortable with the crowd and the environment and I didn’t feel like I had much to talk about. You can take the Jason out of the Hurricane but you can’t take the Hurricane out of the Jason, I guess. Not enough tattoos and piercings being displayed. Makes me antsy. We stayed there till maybe 12 and Steve and Cristin decided to call it a night.

So we froze our way back to the car and headed towards home. At least, that’s what Adam thought we were doing and I kinda did too. The girls had other plans. JoLynn got us pointed at The Record Bar and I started having a good time again. There was a swingish band on stage called The Grand Somethings and they kicked ass. I was drunk enough that I wanted to dance but no one would oblige. We stayed there till they kicked us out and then headed home. Jo and Tricia wanted to hit Buzzard Beach or it’s equivalent but Adam was having none of it.

Eventually we made it back to Adam and Jo’s place and settled in for some more drinking and watching of Trailer Park Boys. Good times. Jo and Tricia continued to get plastered and I passed out on the futon.

Amazingly I woke up on Sunday feeling good in body but bad in spirit. I fucking hate Sundays. I decided to try to cure my loneliness by spending as much money as I possibly could in as short a time as possible. I started with a cheese steak to get things running again and headed for Dick’s for some snow gear. After browsing jackets for like 2 hours I ended up with some badass snow pants, a North Face triclimate jacket and a really sweet North Face beanie that is light on top but insulated around the ears. Headed for the mall to return some jeans I didn’t like and decided to try to get my watch repaired. The clasp had broken. Not possible to repair locally, of course, so I bought a new one. Then some valve caps for my car, some new books to keep me busy that night and eventually some Chipotle for the same reason. Ha.

And that’s that! Heck of a week or two. And here we go again!

I love this picture.

For Sale:
12″ Apple Powerbook G4 1.0 GHz, 768 MB RAM, 40 GB HDD, Airport Extreme, Bluetooth, 3 Year Apple Care Agreement

It’s in great shape. It’s had the LCD and hard drive replaced within the last year under Apple Care, so they are basically new. Minor wear on the case but very, very little. It’s spent most of it’s time on my desk or in a padded backpack.

Two batteries included. One is pretty worn but the other is less than a year old.

Looking for $1500 but will work on the price. Apple Care itself was $349.

Drop me a line if you are interested.

I’m gonna brag a little. I love my car. I love it, love it, LOVE IT. It’s a blast to drive, looks hot as hell and I just love it.

Aparently the guys from Top Gear do too; and that’s sayin’ something.

What can I say? The last few days were awesome! Thursday Tricia and I had our way with Westport. Friday… wasn’t so awesome. It hurt. But I did spend all night watching Trailer Park Boys with Adam and JoLynn, which was awesome. Saturday I played paintball all day and skied all night. And that’s obviously fucking awesome.

And a few hours ago I had a totally awesome ninja dream.

Man.

I had this great idea today where I would make a site where you could put in all kinds of criteria about a phone you wanted and it would show you all the goods.

Unfortunately I don’t have time to write a site like that.

Fortunately someone already did.

When the iTunes Music Store was first released I was firmly against it. I’ve always been proud of my CD collection, for whatever reason, and I didn’t think that buying an album, for not much cheaper, online was getting me the same amount of product. Primarily my beef was that some day when Apple goes bankrupt, or the iTMS (iTunes Music Store) gets shut down I wouldn’t be able to listen to my music any more. With CDs that can’t happen. The cat is out of the bag. If I woke up tomorrow and every CD player in the world was destroyed I could still build one and listen to my music.

Eventually I discovered JHymn and used it against some iTMS files I had gotten for free (from the store) and it worked. Stripped the DRM off with no reduction in quality. That opened the floodgates. The iTMS is insanely convenient. I get an urge to listen to something and a few clicks later I own it. A few minutes later with JHymn and it’s mine forever, no matter what happens to Apple. You can argue that Apple could close the AAC format, or make iTunes not play unprotected files, but that cat is also out of the bag. We know how to decode AAC into a stream of samples so as long as the file isn’t hindered with DRM my music is safe.

As of iTunes 6.0 JHymn is broken. It’s been an ongoing battle. DVD Jon has been fighting that battle since the beginning but a few things have changed in his life and iTunes 6.0 hasn’t been cracked. I can’t blame the guy. He moved from Norway to San Diego and got a high paying job. Chances are good that if he cracks iTunes 6.0 he’ll go to jail.

So with that my dilemma is back. I’ve bought a few albums from iTMS since JHymn was broken, but I’ve hesitated over quite a few more. More and more I go over to Amazon and buy the CD and wait for it to get shipped. It’s a shame, because nothing satisfies my impulsiveness like iTMS but I don’t like to accept the risk that if something happened to it I would lose access to, possibly, hundreds of dollars of music I purchased.

So what’s the point of this post? Just to let Teh Intertron know that I’m opposed to DRM too. I’m not the only one, by far, but I thought I’d go ahead and add my voice to the chorus.

And one note before people start frothing at the mouth. Note that I talk about buy, and purchase all over this post. I don’t steal music. I never have and never will. I believe in paying for what I use and I always do. But I also believe that once I pay for something I should get to use it for as long as I want to. I don’t rent a CD when I pay the money at the counter, I buy it, no matter how often someone tries to redefine the terms of the transaction.

Well, I have a New Years Resolution.

I want to unzip Charlize Theron out of that latex body suit she wore in Aeon Flux.

Pretty good flick. Lots of gratuitous violence, and plenty of eye candy. Not a whole lot of content, but plenty entertaining.

That’s not really my New Years Resolution. I do have one, but I’m gonna keep it a big secret! Oh how exciting!

The NYE party was big, big fun. We killed the keg of punch and put a solid dent in the Wheat. And had to have pissed off my neighbors something fierce. JoLynn came strapped no regrets with tons of party gear, including horns, so at the witching hour we stood on the front porch counting down, screaming, setting off party popper things, spilling Champagne and blowing horns like crazy.

Here’s to another good year, and if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot of sinnin’ to do in the next 12 months, so I better get started.