a personal blog with nerdy bits thrown in
Just a quick mention to two good friends who celebrated their birthdays this weekend. Sujata and Sean. Happy birthday you two!
Sujata had a rockin’ party on Saturday (with a keg of really good IPA from a local brewpub, Laurelwood) that kept me up late, and Sean had a small BBQ at his house Sunday. Both were fantastic fun. Need to do some serious exercise to walk off all the beer I drank this weekend. 
Tonight Kelly and I (and our good friend Miranda) went to see a show at Dante’s in downtown Portland, a double-headliner of both Stellastarr* (link not working at the time of this writing, you can check out their MySpace page though) and Editors. Before the show we met for dinner and drinks at the Shanghai Tunnel, one of the better spots to hang out in the area near the show.
We got to Dante’s just after the doors opened, and already it was filling up. The opening act, Monsters Are Waiting, were really pretty good. The quirky female lead singer’s appearance was similar to that of Emily Haines of Metric, similar haircut, similar fashion sense, small keyboard, etc. However, musically they were a bit harder on the rock scale. I was very impressed with them.
The first of the two bands we were there to see, Stellastarr* came on and by that point the place was packed (really packed, overpacked even) and very warm and stuffy. The band however put on a great show, despite the electrical system at Dante’s. Towards the end of their 3rd song the power to all the gear on stage dies. The band ends up having to leave the stage while 5 or 6 tech monkeys ran around the stage trying to pinpoint the source of the problem. After about 20 minutes, the band returns and puts on a great show.
After a bit of a break, Editors took the stage and they were fantastic! Unfortunately, they too suffered the same power problems that Stellastarr* had. However, the outage was limited to just the lead guitarists half of the stage (including his guitar), and during one of their more popular tracks. Twice! Yup, about 15 seconds or so into the song Munich the power cuts out. The band leaves, things get fixed in about 5 minutes, they return and start again, and about 15 seconds into the song, bam! Same trouble. Finally things get fixed (after the lead singer makes a joke "maybe it’s the song?") and they are able to finish both that song and the rest of the show without a hiccup.
Both Stellastarr* and Editors put on great shows, and I definately recommend seeing them live (if you’re into that sort of thing). One thing I definately don’t recommend is Dante’s as a venue. It was blazingly hot with little to no ventilation, super crowded, and then the ‘technical difficulties’ during the shows. Just crap. The only good thing about the place was the staff. Despite how crazy it was all the bartenders were friendly and attentive.
After the show, when we finally escaped to the cool outside air, we walked down the street to a Portland landmark of sorts, Voodoo Doughnuts. Kelly and I had never been there before (somehow, even though we’d lived downtown for 10 years, we’d never ventured into the place) and tried their doughnuts, and they were delicious! Mmmmm, doughnuts.
Spent the week working my butt off trying to finish up all my freelance projects. Nearly done (I hope) and once I’m done with that nonsense I can finish all the yard work I need to get done before our trip to the UK. If at all possible I will have a few days to sleep in, and spend the day on the sofa watching Perry Mason.
I’ve received a two phone calls from my brother and his wife since they’ve been in Europe. They’re doing pretty well though they already seemed a bit frazzled (after only a week and a half). Apparently Athens is a bit of an odd spot, quasi "third-world" in some ways, but nice. They spent a few nights on the island of Mykonos, and the weather wasn’t great. By now I think they’re either in Pompeii or Rome. While the southern part of Europe has never held too much sway with me, I do envy all the history they’re seeing. I would really like to see the Acropolis and Parthanon in Greece, and the Colosseum in Rome, and I curse both my brother and sister-in-law while I sit at my computer slaving away on freelance projects. *shakes fist*
Anyway, that’s it for now. More nonsense to come I’m sure.
Well, I know, I suck at blogging. I knew I would. On a day-to-day basis I find I have little to write about. I mean sure, I could write about how I woke up with a sore back, and then stubbed my toe on the dresser in my zombie-like shuffle towards the coffee maker (the life-giver). But normally I just wait until I have something I find worthwhile to write about, and even then ‘worthwhile’ is arguable.
Well, I do finally have some news, really good news. I’m about to end my ‘slacker’ life of freelancing and rejoin the regular working folk. I’m not sure what the etiquette is here, or more to the point the potential legal ramifications, so I’m not going to say what company, but it’s a great web software company located in downtown Portland. I figure that’s just vague enough.
Sadly I fear I’ve not taken full advantage of my little ‘forced vacation’. I’ve been very busy, perhaps too busy. Since mid-January I think I’ve had all of a week or two worth of not doing any work. I’ve been fortunate enough to have found a fairly steady stream of freelance work to keep plenty busy. And when I’m not coding or designing some web site, I’ve been doing a lot of yard work or other house work to fill up any spare time I might have had.
I’ve had more than one friend mention that I’m the bad at being unemployed. I just don’t do it right. I haven’t spent any time lounging around playing video games, or watching television, or sleeping until two in the afternoon. That means in almost exactly 3 months, I’ve had one week "off", and that’s me unemployed! I suck at this.
However, I am very happy about the new job. Looking forward to the challenge, and looking forward to working with the people I’ll be working for and with. The best part is, I won’t be starting until the Monday after Kelly and I return from the UK, which means I’ll be able to dive right in, free from all my freelance work and refreshed from my vacation. Yay! Perhaps between now and my trip I’ll find a bit of time to do some real slacking, before the opportunity is lost.
Today my mom and I saw my brother and sister-in-law off at the airport for a mega-gigantic six week European extravaganza. They flew Lufthansa from Portland to Frankfurt, Germany and then connected to Athens, Greece. From there they’ll hit Italy, France, Holland, England, meeting Kelly and I in Scotland, then on to Salzburg, Austria, and finally Munich, Germany before returning home. Both Kelly and I are very jealous of their six week holiday, though we both think they’re a bit nuts to do so much! Safe travels to the both of them.
Update: They arrived safely in Athens, and are on their way. Hooray!
I helped my sister-in-law and her family move today. They live in Lacey WA (just north of Olympia), which is about a two hour drive from Portland. We wanted to arrive as early in the day as we could, so Kelly and I got up at 6:30am, got on the road at around 7:45am, drove up I-5 through a nasty rain storm and arrived in Lacey shortly after 9:30am. The move wasn’t too bad, a lot of the small things had already been moved during the past week, but that left the really heavy items. My brother-in-law and I moved desks, dressers, cabinets, beds, etc, and then some of my brother-in-law’s friends arrived to help pack some of the heavier things (giant entertainment center, huge and heavy matress, etc) and finished moving at around 1:30pm. Boy was I exhausted (still am).
Before Kelly and I drove back home there was this mission I had to complete. There’s this beer I love, a German beer from Munich’s famous Hofbräuhaus, the Hofbräu Original (a delicious lager, my favorite beer next to Guinness) that had been distributed here in Portland until a few years ago when the distributor stopped importing it (which still confuses me greatly). It is, however, still distributed in parts of Washington, and since I was in a vicinity known to sell it, my mission was to track some down. Fortunately, the one store a friend of mine had recently purchased Hofbräu from was no more than a few miles from my sister-in-law’s house. So we drove to the store and I did a little dance of joy when I saw the beer on the shelf. I bought what they had on the shelf (ten 500 ml bottles) and left the store, still dancing (well, as close to dancing as I could manage, after spending four hours moving heavy furniture).
Drove the nearly two hours home (frustrated all the way by folks from Washington who insisted on using the passing lane for cruising at slow speeds), and on the way decided to swing by our favorite English pub, Moon & Sixpence, for a couple pints before going home. I’m home now (as of 10pm), sore as heck, but enjoying the Hofbräu Original very much. What a day!
According to this article on Reuters, movies for the PSP (on their proprietary UMD, or Universal Media Disc) may be going away. Apparently two major studio’s (Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures) have dropped the format already, and others may follow suit, due to lackluster sales of films on the format. The article mentions that Retailers are also considering dropping UMD from their shelves entirely. Bad news for PSP owners who like to relax on the train and watch movies. Fortunately there are a lot of titles out there now, and it will likely take a LOT for Sony Pictures to dump the format, so there may still be some hope, for a while anyway.
The article cites a few possible reasons for the drop-off in sales, two of which I myself found likely. One is the release of the fifth generation iPod (with video support), because between the device itself and the ability to buy television shows with iTunes it’s made a very easy (and relatively cheap) process for customers. Two is that there’s no way to hook your PSP up to a TV, so you can’t watch the movies you purchase on anything BUT your PSP (much less being able to play games on a TV). This was something that always left me scratching my head, make a slick device with good graphics, good game performance, add movie playback with a brand new format (UMD), and then don’t add any kind of TV-out on the thing. Huh? *scratches head* 
Kelly and I attended the CD release concert for a really great local band, Talkdemonic, at Holocene (yup, where Kacey and Ryan got married last weekend) with our friend Miranda.
Before the show we went for dinner and drinks at Lucky Lab, a great local brew pub, which aside from having great beers and great food, is also a super dog friendly place (where you get to pet a lot of other people’s dogs, yay!).
Next we went to Holocene and waited in line a bit before 9pm. We finally got in, got a couple drinks and then the first of two opening acts went onstage, Horse Feathers and they were really good. Very mellow acoustic music. The lead singer reminded Kelly and I a little of David Gray. We ended up buying their EP during the show. The band consisted of a lead singer / guitar player, a girl on keyboards singing harmony, and another fellow who alternated instruments from violin to banjo bass. During their set they announced that they have a full-length album coming out in June. Looking forward to hearing that, as the EP is very short and sounds very homemade.
The second opening act was another local band called Wet Confetti. They were good, but there were two things that both Kelly and I couldn’t get past. First, we couldn’t get get away from how similar they were to Blonde Redhead, both in the band’s composition (two males, and an asian female vocalist) and even their sound. Second, the sound of the room where the concert was held at Holocene was less than great. It made it hard to hear the female vocalist at times, and at other times it was just a mess of noise that made it hard to discern anything other than than the drums.
Finally, at about quarter past midnight, Talkdemonic took the stage. We’d seen them once before at the Doug Fir, and as before, they were fantastic. The ‘band’ consists of two people, a guy who alternates between drums and keyboards, and a girl who plays the violin. They perform with a pre-recorded track (off of a computer) of some beats, bass lines, and/or guitar riffs, and the guy of the duo (Kevin O’Connor) drums or plays keyboards to it, while Lisa Molinaro, the violinist, beautifully plays over top of it all. It is truely beautiful music, and really fun to see live. Despite the fact that it’s not your traditional rock show (there are no vocals of any kind) they really do rock, and they have a sound that is very unique. I’m listening to their new CD Beat Romantic now, and it is really really good. I highly recommend it.
That said, they too suffered from the same sound issues that Wet Confetti did unfortunately. Early in the show you could hardly hear Lisa’s violin playing, and the pre-recorded backing track was so loud that it was all you could hear most of the time. Fortunately having heard them before (both live, and via their first album) I knew enough songs to know what they sounded like and was able to get past some of the mixing board issues, but overall the sound was less than great. I’m still glad to have seen them live, and to have been there to support them for their release party for their second album. Oh, and Holocene was totally packed full. Yay for Talkdemonic!
Yeah yeah, ok, I know, lame April Fool’s joke, but I can dream can’t I? I don’t typically care about April Fool’s day at all, but I was so annoyed that my favorite nerd news outlet Slashdot was filled with nothing BUT lame April Fool’s stories that I had to rant just a little. Normally Slashdot will have a normal day of legitimate stories and sprinkle in a few legit-sounding joke stories amongst them so they seem remotely plausible. Today however they were all really dumb and obvious, with hardly a real story in the mix. I was disappointed.
I then, out of curiosity, looked up the history of April Fool’s Day. It seems to have originated with the conversion from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. The Julian calendar had the new year starting on or near April 1st, and the new Gregorian calendar (well, new in 1582) moved it to January 1st. Those who refused or resisted the calendar change were dubbed as foolish, and tricks were played upon them. This is apparently only conjecture however, as no historical evidence exists to support it. There are other potential sources for April Fool’s Day (or All Fool’s Day). Regardless, it’s all very silly.
Tonight Kelly and I had dinner at a Salvadore Molly’s (the one on S.E. 33rd) with our friends Miranda and Brian. There were two reasons for going. The first, we’d wanted to go for some time, we’d heard that the food was good, and the second, for a dish named Great Balls of Fire. The menu says "Many have tried, and some have died! Eat all five habanero-cheese fritters with the sauce, and get your picture on the Wall of Flames!!"
Now, I’m big into spicy food, I liberally sprinkle habanero powder on my popcorn, or dump whole bottles of Tabasco on my eggs and hashbrowns for breakfast, but these suckers are HOT! However, I was able to eat all five with relative ease, and used what was left of the habanero sauce on my main meal (the Mojo Kalua Pork, which was awesome). Those Great Balls of Fire are really delicious, if you can get past the burning. Brian wasn’t doing quite as well as I, but managed to get all 5 down as well (he was determined), so we both got polaroid’s taken and put on the wall.
However, the Great Balls of Fire were filling by themselves, but then add the heaping portions of a main dish and both Brian and I were absolutely stuffed (think Monty Python’s "Mr. Creosote" sketch from The Meaning of Life). The food is good though, well worth a visit. The website (linked above) has the menu’s in PDF form.