• Friday Flashback: Matthew Sweet–“Girlfriend”

    September 30, 2011 / No Comments

    Matthew Sweet released the Girlfriend album in 1991. I didn’t discover it until 1993 when my college roommate introduced him to me. I fell in love instantly, and then that year Matthew Sweet released another great album, Altered Beast. I’ve been a fan ever since despite his last few albums not being as strong, but all his 90s stuff is great. To this day, Girlfriend is my favorite road tripping album.

    His latest album, Modern Art, was just released this past Tuesday. I haven’t listened to is much yet, but it will be in my rotation for the next few weeks.

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  • My online backups

    September 29, 2011 / No Comments

    CrashPlanIn January I made a New Year’s resolution to get my computers backed up online. I’ve always been good about backups, but they were always kept local except for my pictures, which I burn to DVD and take a copy to work. There are many different online backup options these days, from Carbonite, Mozy, DropBox, and CrashPlan.

    I chose CrashPlan for four reasons. They have unlimited storage, I can backup multiple computers, they are affordable, and I can use their software to backup to multiple locations. That last reason is probably my favorite. All I need is the CrashPlan software running, and it will keep my systems backed up to both my NAS, and the CrashPlan servers. No need to run other backup software for my multiple backups.

    I started my backups in January and they were finally finished this week. It took nine months of continuously backing up to get everything up there, but now they are there, so it’s only incremental backups from here on. They also just recently released an iPhone app too. So now I have access to all my files from my phone too. It’s pretty sweet. I’m sure I will find many uses for it.

    I’m pretty anal about my backups, and for that reason I have never lost a file. I’ve had a few hard drives die, and it’s never been much of a problem because of my backups. I hate it when I hear my family and friends losing stuff because they don’t have proper backups. Storage is so cheap these days. There is no reason you shouldn’t have multiple backups of all your important files.

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  • Flashback Friday: R.E.M–“Orange Crush”

    September 23, 2011 / No Comments

    So this week R.E.M. called it quits. I was a little young when R.E.M. started as a band. I didn’t really get into them until their sixth album, Green. I wasn’t a huge R.E.M., but I did like them, and own every album since Green, except for the one they released this year. “Orange Crush” was the first R.E.M. video I saw on MTV back in 1988. I was instantly hooked, their next few albums were their best, and were almost soundtracks for my high school years.

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  • What do you want done with your body?

    September 21, 2011 / No Comments

    Yesterday at lunch somehow we ended up talking about cadavers. Our new chemist was talking about all the body parts they had in the freezer at his old job. They had big sheets of skin, foreheads, even penises in the freezer.

    That got me thinking about what I want done with my body after I don’t need it any longer. It’s actually something I think about quite often after reading Stiff, by Mary Roach. A great book I might add. I Honestly I don’t really care what is done with my body. My family will do whatever they want with it. It’s not like I would ever know. Personally, as creepy as it sounds, I would prefer to have my body donated to science, after of course all the usably organs are donated. I doubt that will happen because I’m sure my family wouldn’t want to do that, and my first choice would be whatever my family want.

    I find it kind of wasteful to just burn the body, and even more wasteful to burry it and use up the limited land space we have here on earth. Maybe by the time I die they will be able to shoot my body into outer space. How fitting would it be for the molecules that make up my body to be put back where they came from? Call me weird, but my ultimate wish would be to have scientists and students learn all they can, and then have my leftover parts launched into the Sun. Who knows, maybe someday that will be my penis in the freezer that will someday have it’s final resting place on the Sun.

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  • Foo Fighters perform “Dear Rosemary” with Bob Mould on Conan

    September 16, 2011 / No Comments

    via myspace.com/foofighters

    I was secretly hoping Bob Mould would show up and perform “Dear Rosemary” with the Foo Fighters the other night at the concert. Bob Mould is a former Minnesotan, and Dave Grohl did mention that two members of Hüsker Dü we at the show. Sadly they played the song without Bob Mould. They did play “Dear Rosemary” with Bob Mould on Conan the other night though.

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