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We just got back from seeing Everclear at Ribfest. It’s weird seeing bands you loved in the 90s grow up. This really wasn’t the Everclear I grew up with. Art Alexakis is the only original member. It was still a great show. It brought back many memories of my college days. We got right up front against the fence. It was great. I had no heads to try and look over to see. I should have brought my camera, but I didn’t feel like dealing with that. Art sure looked like he was having fun up there. Bands get lots of crap for not hanging it up when they quit making hits. If I was in a band I would keep playing as long as it was fun. I think it would be nice to be able to play smaller venues like this when they get older. I know it is much more fun watching bands play in small venues, it must be fun to play in them.

I love all the software that has portable versions. I usually don’t use them on my thumb drive, I use them at work. Our work computer is locked down so you can’t install anything. I can’t stand using IE so of course I use Portable Firefox to surf the web at work. Last night at work I ran across a video file I wanted to view. It was a MP4 file which of course couldn’t be viewed with Windows Media Player. I hate Windows Media Player anyways. My media player of choice is VLC. So for work I got Portable VLC and was able to watch my video. Portable Apps are great and have many uses.

I have never had any ads on my site. Mostly because for ads to create any money you need traffic to your side. I applied for Google Adsense and was accepted, so I might throw some ads up in my sidebar. I am more interested in playing around with them and seeing how they work than making money. Who knows, maybe having ads will make me want to blog more and produce more content. Maybe my readership will grow beyond three people then. Who knows. I don’t care much either way.

I am not a gear-head. I know just a little more than nothing about cars and engines and such. Today was finally a nice enough day to get our lawn mowed, but our lawn mower wouldn’t run. I changed the spark plug and air filter and changed out the gas, but still no go. Good thing the neighbor was outside. He let be barrow his mower. I would have never asked him. I hate asking neighbors for things. My Father-in-Law is coming up next weekend. I am sure he will be able to get out mower fixed. It’s only three years old, so it can’t be a big thing.

Give me a broken computer and I can fix it no problem, a lawn mower, that’s a different story.

I haven’t played around with the new street view version of Google Maps much, mostly because then don’t have my town mapped out yet. Hell, they barely have a satellite version of my town. Well check this out. They caught someone’s thong on Google Maps. This street view thing is cool, but it could be scary too.

I am not a big fan of music podcasts. Most of the ones that I have tried to listen to don’t really play much music I like. My iPod is full of music I like, so if I want to listen to music I have it all there. I have started listening to The AP Show though. It plays a lot of the stuff I like. I have been a reader of AP Mag for many many years and am a fan of Jason Pettigrew and Scott Heisel.

AP does another podcast that you can find on iTunes, but I couldn’t find a website for it. It’s just call the AP Podcast It is more of an interview type podcast. The newest episode has an interview with Richard Reines from Drive-Thru Records. It’s a great interview. I learned a lot about all the crap the record labels have to go though and how much they are really being hurt by downloads. Richard also has a lot of great ideas for the future of his record label. I have been a big fan of Drive-Thru Records, and it sounds like they have a good future. I like guys like him that put out music he likes, not just music that he can make a buck off of. So head over to their site and buy some of their shit. The new Hellogoodbye and Self Against City cds are great.

I have never bought music off of iTunes. The main reason being the crippling DRM. Now that they are starting to sell some music without DRM I actually looked at the store today. I thought I would look for a few of the CDs that I plan on buying this week. I looked for the new Ozma, Groovie Ghoulies, and Dinosaur Jr. CDs and they didn’t have any of them.

Ok, I just did another search and they do have them. Nevermind that thing about iTunes not having my music. I guess they do. They are crippled though, so I will be buying the CDs. Someday all of iTunes music might be fit to buy, but not yet. Once all their music is DRM free and they drop the price of their DRM free music to $9.99 or less for an album I am all over it. Until then, I am still buying cds.

So I had a few non-geeks email me about not understanding that cool license plate that I saw a few days ago. Here is a great leet speak converter for all you non-geeks that didn’t understand t3h 1337.

For a lot of people Memorial Day is the start of summer. They head to the lakes, go camping, grill out, drink a lot of beers. Not me.

My family has always had the same Memorial Day tradition. Every Memorial Day we head to my Mom’s hometown, and attend the Memorial Day ceremonies. It’s the day I visit my Great Grandparents that I never knew. It’s the day I visit the uncle that was killed in Vietnam that I never knew.

This year will be the first time I get to visit someone I knew. It will be my first visit to my Grandpa’s grave. He died two years ago, but I had to work last Memorial Day. I don’t know how I am going to feel. My eyes are already starting to water just thinking about it.

My Grandma on my Dad’s side died in 1987. I feel terrible that I have only been back to her grave once since. She is buried in my Dad’s hometown which I don’t get to very often. I couldn’t control myself when I saw her grave. I think it also had something to do with my last name being on it.

Memorial Day is a sad day for me. It’s the day that I remember not only the veterans, but everybody who has passed on. It’s my day to say thanks.

I have been offline all day today. I feel so out of touch.

It’s Towel Day today. I got my Towel. Where is yours?

It’s weird how often the number 42 came up today. It seemed like I couldn’t do anything without noticing the number 42 today.

I also saw this sweet license plate today.

I think that must be the coolest license plate that I have ever seen.