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When March ends, we can usually expect April to arrive shortly after. Of course, that means new pranks to ring in the new month, blooming flowers, all of the festivities of R.E.M. Day, and of course new Morrissey and Flaming Lips albums. New Moz records always set the internets aflame with activity, so of course Ringleader of the Tormentors is no different. I think that the expectations for this one may be set a bit high (and initial reviews seem to indicate that it doesn't meet them) since we were all wowed by You Are the Quarry just a couple of years ago. That album certainly benefitted from 7-8 years of pent-up anticipation; we probably would've bought millions of a disc of Moz doing 12 reinterpretations of "Unhappy Birthday" at that point. So, now that's he's back into the studio album/tour/live album & DVD/recording cycle does more Morrissey mean that we'll settle for lesser quality songs? We'll see when the record makes it out there.
Until then, check out 5ives' "Five Terrible Fake Morrissey Songs." I don't care that they're fake; they're still the sort of titles that only the quiffed one could get away with recording.
Also, at Spin, finally an honest review of Guns 'n' Roses' long-delayed Chinese Democracy.
Now listening: Franz Ferdinand - "Sexy Boy"
Jerad posted this in Albums | Comments (0)
I love that Apple doesn't sell spare parts for its computers. That means that a small industry has built up around people fixing Macs by using spare parts that they get from other Mac users. Instead of my busted Powerbook just being a pile of junk, I had multiple people (via Craigslist) willing to pay about $500 for what was left of it. Based on the responses that I got, I think I probably could've gotten a bit more for the shell of my beloved Mac, but I'm happy with how things turned out. I'm comfortable knowing that my Macs are good investments; I imagine that it's much harder to find someone to fork over a few Benjamins for a wrecked Windows PC.
Jerad posted this in Mac | Comments (0)
You're talking to a friend, and say you want to express your feeling that their idea for a better mousetrap won't actually result in the weeds on the path to their front door being trampled. Being an honest friend, you have two options of what you can say to him.
1. "I'm sorry, but I don't think you have really thought this out. I don't believe that this will be a popular idea."
or, 2. "That's going to be really popular."
To the casual Drive Blind reader, these seem to be completely opposite comments. However, this is only because I don't have a good way to let you know that #2 has that famous sarcasm drip. It's one of writing's and the internet's greatest shortcomings - there's no easy way to indicate sarcasm in your writing or chats. I'm sure, given context, and someone with better writing skills than mine, it can be done, but what is one to do in the context of a regular IM chat? I guess the sticking-my-tongue-out emoticon :-p works somewhat, but those are so late 90's. Why hasn't something better been developed by now? I had hoped that by the late naught's that all keyboards would have been upgraded to include a sarcasm button, but I don't see one here on my laptop. Apple, of all companies, should've figured this out by now. I demand a solution, and that should carry some weight considering that I was given an honorary doctorate in sarcasm in high school by my friend Dr. Cynical.
My only suggestion is that we use the underline to let the reader know that you're hitting them with some of your sarcastic wit. It'll save a lot of frustration on both the sending and receiving end, and will allow more use of this grossly-underrepresented text adornment. I just fear that this is such a great idea that it will take the internet by storm and exponentially drive up the daily traffic on this site. That would be horrible.
Jerad posted this in Complaints | Comments (2)
Apparently getting engaged and then trying to buy a condo the week after is a lot of work. So, I don't have anything new. Since I'm not providing you with any new material, why don't you head over to the Bloggies page to see this year's winners. I'm sure you can find some good blogs there that will fulfill your need for wasting time at work.
Jerad posted this in Nuttin Much | Comments (0)
Today was going to be the day to explore the area around my ocean-side hotel in Cascais, Portugal, although the horizontal rain washed out that idea pretty quickly. At least I got to sleep until noon here, so maybe that'll help my cold go bye-bye.
In between e-mails, web classes, and sneezing yesterday, I re-discovered one of my favorite, but silly, jokes:
Knock-knock.
Who's there?
Interrupting Cow.
Interr-
MOOOOO!
Cows, by definition, are funny.
Jerad posted this in Nuttin Much | Comments (1)
We got engaged in Crested Butte on St. Patrick's Day. The snowboarding was great, too.
Jerad posted this in About Me | Comments (5)
Drive Blind will be taking a hiatus, probably, until this weekend. We'll be off in Colorado here, throwing ourselves down the side of a slippery mountain. I hate flights before 8 a.m, but everything else about the trip will be great. I'm sure that I'll come back with lots of pictures.
Last night I went to see the Pogues at the Orpheum. I only knew a few of the songs ("A Pair of Brown Eyes," "Fairy Tale For New York," and a couple off of Hell's Ditch), but it was a great high-energy show. Impressively, Shane was able to stay standing for the whole thing, although we certainly didn't understand a word that he said in between songs. The rest of the band wisely chose the setlist so that he got a break every few songs and could go backstage to drink or shoot up or fall over. A big pbbth goes out to the drunk oaf standing behind us who was upset that someone in the sold-out theater would have the nerve to stand in front of him. Fortunately, his friends dragged him out early, but certainly not early enough.
Finally, if anyone knows of an Irish string instrument that's larger than a mandolin but smaller than a guitar, let me know. I wasn't able to see how many strings it had. The guy on the left of the stage played one a lot, but I didn't recognize it. I'll try to find a picture of it later.
Jerad posted this in Nuttin Much | Comments (1)
For those of you who I forgot to remind that I'll be on the air this afternoon, which is almost everybody, consider this your notice. As always, if you're not in the area, you can listen to WMFO's webcast from their front page, or find the stream on iTunes. I may not have the captive audience that I had for my last show, but I can still promise that it'll be a good 'un. I'll also be able to log into Spinitron this week, so you can follow what I'm playing song-by-song.
Three days until Colorado. Rock.
Updates: Here's the playlist and archived show.
Jerad posted this in Radio | Comments (0)
MacZot!, a new Mac software site, launched this past week. This store is using Woot's business model of selling one thing a day, and only until they run out of stock of it. Sometimes that takes all day, other times they're gone in ten minutes. I think that I was pointed to MacZot from Lifehacker and have been following their offerings all week. I decided to take the plunge yesterday morning on their MysteryZot. Yes, the first thing I decided to buy was the one thing that they weren't telling me what it was. So, for about $15 I got five new little Mac apps that they had offered earlier in the week. I was disappointed that the package didn't include some of the other apps that looked like something I might really use, but maybe now I'll give Sudoku a try.
As a solid Woot! addict, I very much appreciate the one-day-one-item sales model, and get really excited when they don't tell us what they're selling. The one time that I successfully bought a Woot Bag Of Crap I got some DVD-RW disks, a Sony remote control with silly-large buttons, a falling-apart faux-leather satchel, and some flying mosquito toy. The Sony remote control was actually very useful as a strange Yankee Swap present this past Christmas.
Now I'm off to check out a condo again. We wandered into this place last weekend during Open House Fest, and have been talking about it all week. Then a high school friend is in town all weekend, so I hope that Boston is ready to deal with spawn-of-WAG.
Now playing: Gomez - Liquid Skin
Jerad posted this in Mac | Comments (0)
Drive Blind has been busy with non-blogging stuff lately, but that Ted Leo post is looking a bit old so it's time for something new. The excitement around here has been that my beloved phone died, but at least Cingular is replacing it with the upgraded version, although I don't think they know that. I'm also getting ready for next week's vacation to Crested Butte, CO to see my sister and have her show me up with her mad snowboarding skillz. And then the week after that I'm off to Lisbon (yes, the one in Portugal) for a few days. It's business, but there will be fun time. If anybody knows anything about Lisbon, I'd be interested to hear. Most of my knowledge comes from the 3rd grade unit we did on Portugal, and I don't think that my memory of a paper mache relief map of the country will serve me very well there. I do seem to remember that there are mountains somewhere, though; maybe near the coast?
Tonight I might head to TT the Bear's to see Charlene again. If you miss the show, I'm sure that Brad will post some of the songs afterwards.
I've gotta get back to refreshing my FedEx window to see exactly when my new phone arrives.
Jerad posted this in Nuttin Much | Comments (0)
I've become quite lax in my concert ticket buying lately. I used to be the guy who was on the phone or in front of his keyboard at 10 am on Saturday morning when the tickets went on sale for every show. I remember spending over three hours on hold while trying to get tickets for the Tibetan Freedom Concert (the Washington, D.C. one), and I got them. However, in the past few months I've missed shows by Feist, Supergrass, U2, Belle & Sebastian and the upcoming Ted Leo, and Arctic Monkeys shows since they were sold out before I decided to fork over the $20. I know about these shows well in advance, most still before the tickets are on sale. I even remember checking on the availability of tickets for one of this week's Belle & Sebastian/New Pornographers shows at Avalon, and there were tickets available. I have no idea why I didn't buy one or two. At least I'll still get to see Charlene, The Pogues, and Franz Ferdinand over the next month or so. I'm sure I'll also be kicking myself a bit more for missing B&S by listening to today's Here and Now interview with Stewart Murdoch.
In lieu of actually going to see Ted Leo again this weekend, I posted some pictures from one of his many Boston-area shows last year at the Somerville Theater. It's amazing how much this guy can tour and how he can sell it out every time. Plus, he has (or had) the same phone as me, so he gets even more cool points. Not that his scorecard isn't already overflowing with cool points.
Jerad posted this in Live | Comments (2)
I received my Apple iPod Hi-Fi today, less than 24 hours after it was announced. Way to go, Apple, with getting this right out there. Why couldn't you have done that with my MacBook Pro, which I really needed the next day? Sigh...I'm just too impatient. Anyhow, I've posted pictures of my unpacking and first listen at my Flickr page.
I hope to be able to post some dissection pictures of what's inside this thing once I figure out how to get inside. The assembly of it is pretty slick; I can't figure out where to start, other than just smashing the top with a hammer. I'll try to be more delicate than that.
Update: This is the first Apple product I've bought that didn't include the logo stickers. Maybe they were just forgotten in the first shipment. It would be a shame to see them disappear.
Jerad posted this in Mac | Comments (2)
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