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(Warning, this sort of turned into a long blog entry, which means its full of geeky details.) Not too much happened today. Susie stopped by and wanted me to help her pick out a computer. We cruised the local places and Costco had an 3.0 Ghz hyper-threaded Pentagram IV system with a bunch of RAM and an LCD screen for like $1399. I guess the slaves in China are working hard. I'm trying to get her talked into either a laptop (which I think she'd like) or building a PC, but she wants a manufacturer and/or store to complain and/or take it back to if she has problems. Piecing together a system with the same stuff and specs actually was going to be neck and neck anyway. Sure I was pricing quality components at Infotech, and HP is probably cutting corners, but who am I to complain? One less PC to assemble.
I feel like open-mic night tonight was one of the first things to go decently all week. After the various BS of this week, I was beginning to get sort of disillusioned. The funny thing is that I distinctly remember thinking to myself, "Things went pretty well in March; karma dictates that can't last." So I guess I'm not surprised. Even the horoscope I looked at in Seattle Weekly told me to expect to take it in the ass for a while.
Today was just one of those days were everything was starting to get to me. I was late to class, on the way I listened to Bush not really answer any questions about the Iraq situation, the subject material in class sucked, and when I got to open-mic night at Cookie's, Ed has the bass guitar on the PA turned down to the point where you can't hear it at all because the bar owner told him they were getting complaints of a "thump thump thump" noise from nearby homes. Most normal people would equate that to drums, but perhaps since I just walked in, something in his mind clicked to "bass too loud." After the song was done, I said, "Ed, I can't hear the bass at all" and he goes, "Well if you walk across the street you can hear it!" Uhhhhh....no. I just came in from outside and you can't hear a damn thing but the guitar. Besides, people are always going to bitch about the noise, but it is a bar, and they have a permit to make noise. So WTF?
Since Les, Lisa, and Biff have beaten me to the punch, I'm just going to shamelessly copy their idea. So here are the questions:
Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says.
"...to grating industrial thrash, if it's got a following, It's probably got a melody, a..."
I'm about to brave the scorching 79 degree weather to go change the timing belt in Lisa's car. I'd rather do other things, sure, but it does beat working on the car in the rain.
Speaking of cars, on the first tank after installing the K&N air filter in the Honda, my mileage went up two MPG to 35 MPG. That's with the air conditioner going half the time, and I don't exactly drive slowly. Once again, not bad for a 17 year old carbuerated car.
Today I took care of a bunch of errands around town, mowed the lawn, and cleaned the fishtank. So I get home, snag some grub, and I'm about to jump in the shower and Travis calls, no big deal. The next thing, I look over at the clock, and see that it's 4:07pm. Damn, if I'm even going to get to class on time I've got to get out the door at 4. So I tell Travis I got to go, and try to take a quick shower. I'm pretty sure only one song by the Exploited played while I'm in the shower, so that leaves only a time-space distortion to be blamed for it somehow being 4:35 when I get out of the shower. By the time I get clothed and ready to go, it's quarter to 5, and I'm already set to miss 45 minutes of a two hour class. So I throw in the towel and call one of my study partners. I told him that Lisa's car was having problems and I needed to go to B.I. to take care of it.
I've either been busy or sort of a slug lately, so I'm definitely not up to the Lisa or Les standard of blogging. But I'll give a quick rundown of the week's events so far.
Saturday we got home after about a day straight of driving. The car did very well. It's hard to believe that I've put almost 23,000 miles on it since I bought it last May.
We're back from the break. Drove straight from Flagstaff, AZ, starting at noon yesterday. We just got back. We took a two hour nap in northern California, and stopped to eat a few times, but basically tore ass up here the rest of the time. I'm now going to take a nap and trying to regain my status among the living.
As many of you probably know, Lisa and I went to Las Vegas for a spring break vacation. We're not home yet; currently I'm at a Hilton in Flagstaff, AZ writing this. They have free Wi-Fi in the rooms (really cool), but they haven't been able to manage getting the bathroom sink to drain (not so cool). Anyway, we were here because we met up with Neil and took a look at the Grand Canyon yesterday. It was, well, exactly like you'd expect the Grand Canyon to look. We didn't get a chance to hike down to the bottom, as it was quite a drive to get to Flagstaff to meet Neil and then another 75 miles to get to the Canyon.
Spring break is basically here for me. Lisa and I are going to go to Las Vegas for spring break. We're going to see the Grand Canyon (about five hours away I guess) and maybe meet Neil for a bit there. We're also going to take in some shows, do some tours (there is an atomic testing site tour I want to do), and do a lot of nothing. No gambling is on the agenda for me.
I've been taking care of odds and ends that have gotten put off during the quarter; yesterday I fixed the electrical gremlins in the Buick by relugging the appropriate connections, and I changed the oil in the Honda.
Greg and I hooked up and went to Guitar Center today. He bought a new hi-hat set to replace his, which was starting to crack. He does bash pretty hard but it sucks that those cymbals (Zildjian ZBT's) only lasted about six months. Only the ride cymbal remains from the set now. He bought some Zildjian ZXT's to replace it.
This morning should be my last class of the quarter at Evergreen. I'm looking forward to getting a bit of a break in the coming week. Normally, it would be a finals week, but final projects were due last week at Evergreen, and at Evergreen, it's an "evals" week, where your teachers write an eval. I like the system actually. Instead of getting a grade, you get a written evaluation by an instructor which talks about your strengths and weaknesses. That way if they want to give you a bad score, they've at least got to justify it a little bit. Hence, no more Linnea disaster....
I've got to give props to my man Les for being able to update the blog as much as he does. I've not felt too blog-happy lately.
On Friday, Les and Missy went with Lisa and I to go have dinner. We ended up also going to the movies; we saw Starsky and Hutch. I liked it a little better than Les did. I think the writers had a hard time hitting the mark on what they were trying to do. They were trying to keep sort of faithful to the original series, which was at least semi-serious in terms of cop shows. But that sort of put a damper on the humor factor. Still, there were amusing moments in the movie. I'd agree with Les that it's worth a discount matinee ticket.
The themes seem to have changed for me....now on each theme, the main content area is much smaller, and the sidebar that has most of my KT stuff is freakin' huge!
Here's a screenshot (click for a full sized image):
