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Soul Asylum @ RibFest
Saturday night we went to RibFest. We had some amazing ribs and some roasted corn. It was all yummy, but spendy. I think we spent $40 on food, and we really didn’t eat that much.
The main reason we went on Saturday night was to catch Soul Asylum. They played RibFest a few years back and were awesome. They were one of my favorite bands from the 90s, and being from Minneapolis, always made them special. It’s kind of amazing that the band is still together with very few member changes. They formed it 1983 and have had a few different drummers, and with the death of Karl Mueller, they have a new bass player.
They played quite a few songs off of their latest album, The Silver Lining, which came out in 2006. I thought it was a great album and was surprised it didn’t get any radio play. Since most people didn’t know the new album, the crowed was kind of mellow when they played those songs.
We were right up front against the fence. At one point a fight or something started out in the crowd. We didn’t really see what happened, but the cops were on the lookout on the side of the stage. One of Soul Asylum’s roadies ran by and the cops grabbed him, and almost arrested him. It was kinda funny. Towards the end of the concert Soul Asylum had their roadies come on stage and play with them. The one that was almost arrested mentioned that. I glanced over at the cops and they were smiling about it.
Overall it was a good concert, and I wasn’t even bothered much by any drunks for a change.
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Streaming Netflix
Another thing I played around with over the weekend was streaming Netflix videos to my TV. I am sure a lot of you have heard about the Netflix streaming box from Roku. Well, you can do pretty much the same thing with a media center PC. There is a plug-in for Windows Media Center called vmcNetFlix. It allows you to watch streaming Netflix videos in Windows Media Center. I was able to watch streaming Netflix movies on my XBox 360. The software is a little slow and buggy, but for the most part worked really well. The quality wasn’t quite DVD quality, but that is Netflix’s problem mostly caused by the slow internets we have here in the US. It was more like standard definition TV quality. I don’t know if I would watch a movie this way, but it works great for TV shows. I watched and old episode of Criss Angel Mine Freak and it was quite enjoyable. I love having more and more ways to view what I want when I want.
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Beta
I am usually not afraid of beta software. I am always looking for the latest and greatest thing, even if it breaks stuff sometimes. For some reason I was shying away from the FireFox 3 Beta. The main reason was that most of my favorite plug-ins weren’t FireFox 3 compatable. Now most of them are. Over the weekend it was pissing me off how slow FireFox 2 was. I love the browser, but it was just getting too slow for me, so I went to FireFox 3 Beta on all my computers. I was shocked how fast it is. There are lots of other new features too, but I haven’t dived down into much of them yet. One thing that is taking a little getting use to is the different themes. On my Macs it looks like an Apple app and on Vista it looks like a Vista app. -
Election Issues
I know where I stand on most issues. I am against abortion, but I don’t believe I have the right to make the decision for anybody else, so that makes me pro choice. I am against the death penalty because I think killing people is wrong. I don’t care how bad the criminal is. Lock them up for life, don’t kill them. We as a society are better than that. I don’t think we should stoop to the level of a criminal and kill.
Next Tuesday we are having local elections for some local offices and a smoking bad. I don’t know where I stand on the smoking ban. I love it that people can’t smoke in restaurants around here now. I can’t stand going to bars though. Most bars I struggle to breath and come home reeking. Good thing I don’t go to bars very often. So obviously I would love to see a smoking ban, but at the same time I think bar owners should also have the right to choose if they want a stinky bar or not.
Yesterday at work the radio was filled with ads for both sides of this issue. I think one ad I heard help me decide. They tried to bring the war into it. It said that our soldiers are fighting for our freedoms and we don’t want them to come home to some lost freedoms. Give me a break. That is just stupid. It’s not like we have total freedom in a bar now anyway. If we did I would buy a case of beer and sell it myself if a bar for half the price and make a killing. There are many things you can’t do it a bar. I don’t agree with the war, but I commend the soldiers. They are doing their job, and it is a tough one. I hate it when people use them to try and sell products or in this case get votes. That’s just wrong.
So since I didn’t quite know where I stood on the issue, an ad trying to get me to vote against it will actually make me vote for it. Stupid ads affect me more. You can have all the positive ads you want, but if you have one I don’t like, and I am on the fence, you are more likely to lose my vote than to gain it.
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Pork & Beans with Tay Zonday and Brian Bell
So Weezer’s new album came out today. I picked it up at Best Buy for $18, kinda expensive, but hey, it’s Weezer. I haven’t had much time to listen to it yet, but here is a cool version of “Pork and Beans” sung by Tay Zonday of the “Chocolate Rain” fame.
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Weekend Mess
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the mess we came home to.
My Wife had a little list of things for her Brother to do. It was nothing crazy. Just keep the house cleaned up, do your dishes, lock the doors when you leave, get the mail, and no parties.
He wasn’t home when we got home, doors were all unlocked, mail boxed was packed full, not a clean dish in the cupboard. He didn’t do anything on the list. I knew there was trouble as soon as we drove into the garage. It smelled like a bar. It reeked of smoke and alcohol. He clammed the sticky alcohol smelling substance spilt all over the garage was water, Yeah, whatever. I had to get the hose out to clean the garage. At least it was in the garage and not the house. It was so obvious he had a party, yet he still denies it.
The good thing about it is that it pissed my Wife off and she is even more likely kick him out by August 1st.
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Weekend Recovery
Wow, it’s Friday already. I am still catching up on stuff from the weekend. It was a crazy five day weekend. It started with a sad day at my friends fathers funeral last Friday. Then Saturday we spent the day with the wife’s family, grilled out, and had a good time. Sunday we headed up north for a three hour drive for my cousin graduation. It was my youngest cousin, so it was the last graduation in our family for quite some time. Monday was the usual Memorial Day services. We have been doing the same thing for Memorial Day since I remember. My Uncle died in Vietnam, so Memorial Day has always been about him. After the cemetery visits we went out to my Aunt and Uncle’s lake cabin. It was a crappy ass day, so we just sat inside and ate too much. Tuesday we headed down to the Cities for the Honda Civic Tour. It was at the Myth which is a pretty cool place for a concert. It was a sellout so the place was packed. We saw Phantom Planet, The Hush Sound, and of course Motion City Soundtrack. We actually left after Motion City Soundtrack, so we missed Panic at the Disco. We have seen Panic before, they are good, but there was no way they were going to be better than Motion City. We had a four hour drive ahead of us and wanted to get a head start. We finally got home at 2:00 AM, and were up at 6:00 AM for work. This weekend should be much more relaxing. I have today and Monday off, so it’s a four day weekend. It’s starting to feel like I never work.
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Pork and Beans
Weezer is one of my all time favorite bands. They just released the video for Pork and Beans. It’s teh awesome!!! It is full of internet memes. I wish I could embed it here, but sadly they have disabled embeds. I don’t know why though. This video is going to be hugh on the net. You can check it out here.
**Update**
It looks like the video is getting really popular already. It has over 200,000 views. I was viewer number 204. They are also allowing embeds now, so here it is. -
Disqus Comments
I have been using Disqus for my comments on my comic blog at lolmace.com (which I really need to start updating again). Disqus has a lot of cool features including video commenting using Seesmic. I have been debating wether or not to switch my blog comments to Disqus. Today I switched them to Disqus. What changed my mind was the ability to export comments, so if I want to quit using Disqus, I can export my comments out of their system. Soon I will be able to import all my past comments into the Disqus system. Now if only people commented on my blog.
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Astronomy
I have always been intrigued by astronomy. Of course there was no astronomy teaching in my high school. I took one astronomy course in college and loved it. One of my favorite blogs is BadAstronomy.com. I have been reading that blog for quite some time, and learn something every day from Phil Plait. His video chats are really good. He has great ways of explaining really complex things. Lately he has been answering questions from high schoolers, and while his answers are geared toward high schoolers, really anybody can learn from them. I don’t think the average person knows much about astronomy. Astronomy is one of the sciences that gets ignored, or at least it did in my school. Thanks to the internet, and the Bad Astronomer I can learn all I want about astronomy.