First day in the new office. Still kind of adjusting. It’s kind of weird so far. It’s
noisy, and the floor shakes when people walk buy. Lighting seems a bit
odd as well. Started the day off with a headache before I even got to
work, so perhaps I’m exageratting.

Lots of driving this weekend, especially since I havent gotten my tires
fixed yet. Up to Asheville and back. Caught another Lake Trout/Japan
Air show, then hung out in winston salem for a while. Ate way too
much sushi.

The driving music was:

up:
Meshuggah: Contradictions Collapse/None
Godspeed You Black Emperor!: f#a#xxx

down:

King Crimson: Larks Tongue in Aspic
Mary Chapin Carpenter: time sex love

Godspeed in particular seems to be excellent “driving in the
mountains” music.

Looks like Japan Air is going to open for Trans Am at a show
at ps211/”the wherehouse” in winston-salem in April. Cool.

My brain hurts.

bleah. Two failed attempts at getting my oil changed and tires
fixed so far. Lets try again tomorow.

My new glasses are fucked up I belive. Everything is very sharp
looking dead ahead, but looking even slightly offcenter things
start to lose sharpness. I’m not sure if this is typically of the smaller
lenses, or if they are just screwed up. Am I supposed to be able
to notice things get slightly blurry as I look to the side
(even 10 degrees of so are enough to notice if I’m looking at text)?

Ordered a cell phone. My luck it will take 6 weeks to arrive,
and then be set up for alaska. Bleah.

Looks like someone has hacked plug-in tool support into
the devel branch of The Gimp. Perhaps I should now attempt
to write some of the weird paint tools I have ideas for.

My attempts to find electronica I like are so far pretty
unsuccesful. DJ Shadow is about it so far…

More last minute feature requests that “we just have
to have!” despite there being no mention of them _ever_
before.

The ziggy’s Japan Air/Lake Trout show was excellent.

Wandered up to ashevile on sunday with the Japan Air
guys to poster for Fridays show. Very odd, as I have only
been in Asheville once since I lived there for while when
I was about 7. Very strange what things you do and do
not remember, and how you brain associates them.

Discovered I just missed an Adrian Belew show in
Asheville. Doh. Though I did learn that
Nanci Griffith is playing in March, and then in May in
Lenoir. Interesting. I would like to see that show, if
I can find anyone that wants to go. Looks like
Bill Frisell is playing in April as well.

Made a list of the stuff I’d like to accomplish this week.
Lots of stuff I’ve been putting off for weaks/months/years.
(cell phone, hair cut, new glasses, oil change, etc…)
Most of the list seems to start with a variant of “Buy a ….”

Went and got new glasses this morning. I seem to be able
to see now. Thats a plus. Actualy went and bought some
shoes while I was waiting.

Random friends band plug:
Madeline Ferguson.
A emo/metal/punk/*core band led by the guy that introduced
me to Black Flag and Rush.

Ever get the feeling other people think you are a lot smarter
than you actually are? Or for that matter, _know_ that
they think you are a lot smarter than you actually are.

I seem to be finding myself in that boat alot recently. Very
odd, and unnerving. Especially when you are constantly
surrounded by people that are _way_ smarter than yourself. I
need to find a good “get-smart-quick” plan.

Sooner or later my cover will be blown and my true
dumb guy persona will be exposed.

python conference was fun. Python, the language that is, not the
snake. Snakes are icky.

Much to my surprrise I learned that the object system for python 2.2
is almost completely new. “old style” and “new style” classes live
in parallel. The good thing is that new style classes/objects look
way more powerful with only small syntax canges. Also good is
that built in types (ints/floats/strings/etc) are also now “new style”
classses and can be subclassed, etc. Also learned that scary
python people are just as scary as scary linux people.

Looks like Japan Air
got a decent blurb in the
Winston-Salem Journal. Cool.

The Lake Trout/Japan Air show at the Attic was pretty cool. I got
to play merch booth babe for a while. The beard really says “buy
this cd”. The drive back from greenville at 3am was a bit rough.
I’m pretty sure we drove though Wilson five or six times.

Had a hippy who was selling some sort of handmade arts/craft
crap tell me “nah, you guys suck” when I jokingly offered to
trade a cd for whatever worthless cruft they were selling.
Excellent.

Next show is at Ziggy’s in winston-salem, so that should be fun.

Work is going about average. Kind of in a hurry up and wait. Heading
up to a python conference on Thursday. Might be interesting, havent
been to any sort of expo/conference in a while.

Odd to see a thread about math rock
on metafilter. Even odder that it’s mostly a good thread,
save for the required Rush bashing and your typical luddite-rock cries of “Billy Dead Rocker
could say more with one note!” blathering.

Japan Air is going to be playing a handful
of shows with Lake Trout in the next week or
two in the area. Both bands are excellent. I’d suggest checking them out if you get
the chance.

I seem to be having issues with roadrunner. My router doesnt seem to be able
to get a dhcp request anymore. Somewhat concerning. Speaking of roadrunner,
they seem to have the ugliest web
site ever

On the odd and concerning note, mapquest plotted me directions to greenville,nc
that are 101.63 miles with an estimated driving time of 2 hours and 35 minutes.
ie, somewhere just under an average of 41mph. Hmmm.

sooperlooper. Linux based software looper. Interesting.

I’ve been avoiding anything music related on the computer for a while. I suspect this might
break that. I least till I get frustrated with it.

beattallica

Oh, that is delightfully twisted.

Interesting day.

Note: All of kde+2.4 kernels+XFree4 == BIG.
RHN probabaly hit our all time high bandwidth useage today,
and even had to start temporarily turning away free users for
a bit.

Hung out with the Japan Air
guys a bit at Kitchen Mastering.
They were getting a cd mastered there, kind of interesting to watch the process.

Got some bug reports at least. The bugzilla entries for up2date were getting
kind of stale recently. I’m never sure if this is a good or a bad thing.

title seems to be the quote of the day. I love mixing cliches/metaphors.
It sends a shiver down my heart.