The Heat is On

I was on the bus yesterday and I went by Channel 7's building. It has one of those time and temp readout you sometimes see on banks and such-like. Anywaze, the read-out said it was 97. Dats hot. I was rainy, grey mild a week or so ago. It be getting hot up in here now.

Sticky Keys

I was pounding on my keyboard at work yesterday and I got some message box yapping about setting "Sticky Keys". I said no thanks. I was typing on my computer now and got the same thing. WTF? Is this a new thing or am I just getting lucky. Microsoft is out there trying to help me out I guess.
Speaking of which. Stop me if you have heard this one before:
Q: Why was Bill Gates wife so upset on her honeymoon?
A: She found out why they call the company Micro-soft.

Take a Wok on the Wild Side

I just got back from the Pacific Mercantile, the local Asian grocery store. I got a couple nifty bowls. (I only had one bowl now I got three. (In different sizes for different occasions.)) Also got some exotic food to try out. Right now I am munching on some 'Potato Flavored Snack'. Seems to be kind of like Pub Fries if you have ever had those. They are pretty good. I also got some Natto, which Anthony Bourdain hated so much in the book 'A Cooks Tour'. Can't hurt to try is my opinion. Actually, I have wanted to eat some since reading that book. How bad can it be? Its a fermented soy bean concoction of some sort. And I got a durian fruit soda/juice kind of thing. I have no idea what that will taste like.

I once had a can of celery soda. It was not very good. Though not as bad as you might think. (I didn't barf drinking it, but I didn't finish it either.)

Bruce

Most overrated band/musician ever?
Bruce.
The boss is so far and away the leader here, I'm going to give him the honor of not making a list of it. And I liked a fair number of his songs too - Glory Days, Born in the USA (sometimes), Santa Claus is Coming to Town.. But I don't know what happened to him. My main bitch is that the guy used to look and pretend to be an under employed mechanic or something. Now he's playing the Pepsi stadium and charging $100 bucks! What about the people Bruce?
I get some of this vibe from U2 also. I really dug them back when. I liked the new song they had on the Ipod commercial, but when I listened to the album at Virgin records recently, that was the only song I liked. Guess what the rest sounded like? Dreary, dirge like, self important. Not unlike Bruce.

The Denver Post Rocky Mountain News Duopoly

There are 2 major 'newspapers' in Denver. The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. They are owned by the same company, so its sort of like having 1 and 1/2 'newspapers'. Neither of which I care to buy. I get one of them (I am not sure which) dumped on my doorstep occasionaly. I havent' had this happen for like over a year, but it looks like they are starting again. Don't know why. They probably tell their advertisers that their circulation is at a certain number. Most of which probably goes in the trash. Way to go guys! The papers are mostly advertising, they NEVER do serious investigation, and any opinions expressed in them are lame, diluted, p.c. etc. Its fine that they do what they do, just don't dump it on my doorstep. I don't care to be taking out the trash all the time...

"Environmental Music"

I was at Barnes and Noble earlier today (Saturday) and they started playing that song, "I will always love you" by Whitney Houston. I thought, God, haven't I heard this song enough, years ago? Apparently companies play background music to encourage people to stay longer. I left considerably earlier. And it wasn't just that song. I had called B&N earlier in the day, got put on hold and they were blaring some crap while I was on hold. Shit, do I have to listen to bad music all the time? Fuck you Whitney.

Most Under-rated Rock Bands

Here is my list, in no particular order (and subject to addition as I consider the subject).
1. The Kinks
2. Cheap Trick
3. The Throwing Muses
4. Screaming Trees
5. SuperChunk
6. Sleater-Kinney
7. The Mekons

To be fair, some of the above aren't under-rated, they aren't rated period. I don't think most people have heard The Mekons for example. I remember hearing Screaming Trees on the radio back in the grunge era. I don't know why they weren't as big or bigger than SoundGarden or Nirvana, both of which I really like. Oh well.

I may do an over-rated list. If so, I think Bruce Springsteen will be numero uno.

Craig's list.

Here is an article about the super cool site craigslist. Great site. Its the worlds best classified ad section. If you haven't checked it out do.

Here is a quote: "Craigslist.org gets more than 4 million classified ads and 1 million forums postings each month, and Newmark — who no longer runs it but remains one of three board members — is often blamed for decimating classified advertising revenue at regional newspapers."

When I lived in Fort Collins there was one major local newspaper, the Fort Collins Coloradoan. And it was owned by the Gannett organization. And a big reason people bought the thing was for the classifieds. With craigslist you get a lot more. Free. Without the USA Today bs.

And come to think of it, USA Today, is the paper that is the most obvious source of The Onion's jokes. With its charts, color coding, dumb subject matter, weak investigation, etc.

Anyway, more power to craigslist and I am looking forward to see how they change things.

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy.

I saw this last Saturday. It was ok. Not great but pretty good. Part of the humor in the book is the authors style, his tone, which is not easily transferred to the screen. So, I give it a thumbs up, but read the book if you want the real deal.

Da Vinci code.

I just started Dan Brown's book Angels and Demons. So far so good. I got it cause I like The Da Vinci Code. The reason I got that is because the thing is such a big seller and I wanted to see what the fuss is about. Also, I heard about it on NPR. They were interviewing this guy in London who is a cabbie who reads alot. The cabbie was talking about how he was asking a guy who had read The Da Vinci Code, what was up with the book? The guy said 'Plot Plot Plot'. Which is true enough. Its a page turner. Easy to read. I enjoyed it. And I mostly read non-fiction these days.

Home Development.

I have visual studio at home. (Microsofts programmer stuff.) Anyway, for a long time I hadn't been able to do web development with it because I didn't have IIS configured correctly. I figured out how to get it set up for .net 1.1 (which was the problem). Actually, I didn't figure it out, I went to google, copied the error into search box and found the answer. Google rules.
I am happy about this cause now I can do ASP.net development on my home box. And it is satisfying to have something that was nagging fixed.

Star Wars

I read a review of the new Star Wars by Kevin Smith, of Clerks fame. He seems to think it kicks ass. I hope it does. Regardless, I will see it just cause I have seen all the others. Though I don't plan on seeing it opening weekend, much less camp out or anything....

I am skeptical of liking it all that much. I am not that into this stuff anymore. I would have liked it more in 8th grade. (Not to dis the fans, just saying - my tastes have changed. ) Actually, one of the things about movies in general is - you always know the good guy wins. Or almost always. How often does Tom Cruise die? Tom Hanks?

This Star Wars is about the rise of Darth, who is sort of in a transition mode. Hope he's really bad then... One more thing on the subject, I think there should be more exposition on who the Emperor (sp) is. What's his background? The last couple of movies seem to be really long computer graphics battle scenes. I dont' really care about that stuff. I would have liked to get a better idea of the of why the characters were doing whatever. Though the geeks seem to know.

Regional Humor

Here is a mildly humorous, link. You know you are from Colorado when....
Not great but ok. This sort of gag apparently is Jeff Foxworthy's whole career, except with Rednecks. Not to dis him though, on the rare occasions I have heard him I found him pretty funny.

Spammers delight.

I don't know what is going on, but in the past week or so I have been getting a lot of spam in my hotmail box. In the past 2 days I have gotten 35 of them. Here is an example of one:

Account and Password Information are attached!
Visit: http://www.xx.dk

Don't know the site. It doesn't appear to exist anyway. But there is a zip file attached to this thing. Which I did not open. Bastards.

May

Its May now. Here in Denver the weather has been cool and wet-snow/rainy for about the past week. Its grey out now. I don't mind it too much. This place can always use some more water. I am sure it will get warm enough in the summer anyway.