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Flashback Friday: Foo Fighters–“I’ll Stick Around”
I saw the Foo Fighters for the fourth time this week. They are an amazing band to see live. They are one of the few 90s bands that are still going strong and making great music. Their latest album is amazing, and they played a lot from it. They played a lot overall. They played for nearly three hours in front of a sellout crowd of 13,000. There were no gimmicks, no stupid costume changes, no dancers, no computers. Just four guitars and a drummer making great rock music, and got great reviews.
“I’ll Stick Around” was the Foo’s first video from 1995. They looked so young back then. It’s great that they are still rocking the same as they always have.
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Hanson covering Weezer’s “Troublemaker”
via youtube.comI hated Hanson back in the day, and if I wasn’t told, I wouldn’t even have known this was Hanson. It’s a pretty decent Weezer cover.
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10 years ago
So I was just thinking back to what I was doing ten years ago today. So much has changed, but many things have stayed the same. I’m driving the same truck, working the same job with pretty much the same people. Today is one of those days where I wish I saved my blog archives from back then. Back then blogging was new and exciting. I don’t even remember if I blogged about the tragedies of September 11th, or if I just went silent. In September of 2001 I had been blogging for only a year. I started blogging sometime around August of 2000, shortly after getting broadband internet in July. I’m pretty sure I was still on blogger back in those days.
News moved so much slower back in those days. There was no Twitter or Facebook. There was no Google Reader as RSS was just in it’s infancy. There was no podcasting, no YouTube, and very little videos online. TV and radio were the best and fastest ways to get your news. I often wonder what it would be like if such a tragedy were to happen today.
I remember that day like it was yesterday. I was bummed out that day because one of my favorite Bronco players, Ed McCaffrey broke his leg the night before on Monday Night Football. Suddenly that seemed so insignificant. When the first plane hit the reports were sketchy. At first it sounded like it was just a freak accident buy a small plane. Once the second plane hit, the world was changed forever. It was such an eerie time. After the four planes went down we were just waiting to hear if there were going to be more. We couldn’t be sure it was over until all planes were grounded. For months after that, I couldn’t look at a flying plane the same.
The only positive thing that came out of that was how united our country became. Most of the political bickering came to an end. Too bad that didn’t last long, and may even became worse. The way politics has become is sickening. They are all about protecting the big corporations, and trying to sabotaging the other party to help with their own re-election. If only both of the parties could look at the facts and work together to decided what’s right for the people. Yeah, I guess I’m a dreamer.
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Flashback Friday: MXPX–“Chick Magnet”
This is the video that introduced me to MXPX. I have been a huge fan ever since.
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Two State Fairs, and a Valley Fair
I’m finally recovering from the weekend in the Cities. Saturday we went to the Minnesota State Fair. We ate way to much junk food on a stick. Like $60 worth of junk food on a stick. It was only my second time ever going, and I will totally be going back if they bring some more good bands. Saturday night we saw probably my two favorite bands, Motion City Soundtrack, and Weezer. Both of them were amazing. Motion City even played one of our favorite songs, “Capital H”. They didn’t play that song the last three time we have seen them, so it was nice to hear it again. Weezer is always great, but this was the first time I was able to see them from the front row. Rivers came into the crowd a bit, and my Wife was able to touch him. It was pretty cool being that close. I can’t wait to catch both these bands again.After Motion City was done their drummer, Tony Thaxton came out and took a panoramic picture of the crowd. Do you see me there in the front row? No, you can’t really see me because it’s too dark, but I was there.
On Sunday we went to Valley Fair. I’m not a big fan of amusement parks and ride, but I still had fun. I don’t find rides very much fun, but I still manage to ride them all.
On Monday we were back at the State Fair for some more junk food on a stick and to see Maroon 5 and Train. Originally I wasn’t going to go, but my Sister-in-law backed out, so I got stuck going. I had no idea who Maroon 5 even was. They just aren’t my type of music. I thought they were pretty bad, and probably responsible for half the crappy music that is on the radio these days. I’ve see Train many times, and they are usually pretty good, but I was disappointed this time. They just seemed to waste a lot of time, and didn’t play a lot of the songs I like.
We drove straight home from the concert, and got home around 4:00 AM, so today has been sleep and catch up day.
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Do cable companies always suck?
Does anybody ever like their cable company? You can tell how many people around hear love our cable company by the number of dishes that popped up once local channels became available. I was one of those that dropped cable as soon at I could get my local channels on DirecTV. I just got sick of them dropping channels and raising prices, plus there were a handful of channels I wanted that our cable company didn’t have.
I still had to keep them for my internet though. I think the $55 for 5Mb down and 500Kb up is a pretty ridiculous price. In other parts of the country those speeds would probably be a $30 package.
Our cable company is now advertising a 50Mb plan, which would be sweet, but it has too many restrictions. It’s pretty much unusable for me. In fact I don’t know who it’s aimed for. It has a ridiculously low 50GB cap. Any power user would blow through that cap, and any non-power user would probably be fine with their slower 5Mb plan. Here is what my router says my bandwidth usage has been the past few months:
So I would reach the cap in about six days. That reminds me of the olden days back when I was on AOL and had a 20 hour a month limit that I went over easily in the first week and then paid an arm and a leg for internet the rest of the month.
But that’s not the only thing. Not only would I have to cut back on my podcast downloads, and Netflix watching, I would also have to get, or at least pay for cable TV, or phone service in order to get the faster speed internet. And of course they hide what the actual price even is. All they show is the introductory price, which looks good, but would still cost me $75 because I would have to pay for a service I wouldn’t use.
So it looks like I will be stuck with slowish internet for some time. It’s not like it’s terribly slow, it’s more of the slow upload speeds that are killing me. I would be happy to pay $75 for uncapped, or maybe even capped if it was reasonable, 50Mb speeds if they would ever offer such a thing. Maybe I’m just dreaming though.
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Family Decals
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Flashback Friday: Motion City Soundtrack – “The Future Freaks Me Out”
Today we are flashbacking to only eight years ago. It’s hard to believe this song is eight years old already. If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time, you know my current favorite band is Motion City Soundtrack. I get to see them yet again tomorrow. I pretty much lost count at how many time I have seen them, and every time I see them I can’t wait to see them again. They are opening up for Weezer at the Minnesota State Fair tomorrow. Weezer is another band that I have lost count how many times I have seen. It’s pretty much my dream concert. I should have a great time. -
Foo Fighters Garage Tour video
I probably mentioned the Foo Fighters Garage Tour in the past. This video is a nice little mini documentary about their garage shows. A buddy of mine entered the contest, but sadly didn’t win, so I wasn’t able to see the Foo Fighters in his Garage. We will be seeing them on September 14th though. It should be a great show. I have seen the Foo Fighters four times, and it’s always great. How great would it have been to see them in my buddy’s garage though?
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I just discovered Bill Nye’s 100 Greatest Discoveries
I love the all the great things on the internet and YouTube. I just watched an episode of Bill Nye: 100 Greatest Discoveries. I watched the Astronomy edition and it was great. I don’t know when they were one TV, but they are on YouTube now. Bill Nye covers a bunch of different science topics. I will have to work my way through all of them. Here is the episode I just watched in three parts.
