Went to the Emmy Lou Harris/Bruce Cockburn/Mary Chapin Carpenter/Patty Griffin
show last night. Except Mary Chapin Carpenter wasn’t able to make it do to some
sort of back injury. Filling in was local Tift Merrit, who I must say, did a pretty
good job holding her own in a pretty heavyweight group.

The show was more or less what I expected. Acoustic versions of
some of the better known (and/or politicaly approriate) songs by
the artists. I would of preferred a electric show, especially for
Bruce Cockburn, but I digress. Not exactly the crowd I’m
used to seeing shows either. Wonder if I was the only
person listening to Godflesh on the way to the show ;->

Parsing though the code for redhat-config-packages today
to see what I can borrow/steal/improve/etc.

Headed to Winston-Salem Friday night. Went to see Japan Air at Ziggy’s. Got
roped into manning the merch booth. Interesting, 2 of the 3 people that bought
cd’s mentioned they had heard the sample mp3’s off of the net.

Then went to the Tool show on Saturday. I had bought a ticket, but ditched
it when a friend had a couple spare box seat tickets. The box was basically
straight back from the stage, so there was a good view. Definately the
way to see a show.

And the show itself, well…

[mode = “17 year old drunken metalhead”]
That FUCKING ROCKED!!! Woooohooo!!! Tool Fucking Rules!
(throw devil hand gesture in the air) Wooo!
[/mode]

Personal favorite part of the show was when Meshugah’s
drummer and guitarist joined them onstage. The drummer
setup a small rack of rotoroms, and the guitarist had some
sort of synth/noise maker. It started as basically a drum
duet, and then got heavier and weirder. And then heavier.
And then even heavier and more evil. If there had
been a goat in the box, I would have killed it with my
bare hands and drank it’s blood. Overall, an
excellent show.

Otherwise, just hung out in Winston Salem for
the weekend.

Looks like the Microsoft anti-trust settlement is soon to be released and from what I hear,
it’s a weak slap on the wrist. I suspect I should actually read it, but gah,
I don’t really care much anymore. I was kind of hoping for, I dunno,
actual punishment / restitution or something. From the descriptions I’ve
heard so far, it sounds like it will have almost no impact on the way
they do business (you know, the convicted anti-trust monopolist way…).

Should make things interesting at work for the next few years, now that
they have free reign to return to using their tens of billions of dollars
to attempt to put their competitors out of business by any means possible,
legal or otherwise.

Bah. So thats my yearly anti Microsoft rant.