February 2003 Archives

The quick update is I finally got the last track to download, it looks like my cookie expired or something, and with that, my list of issues using Live Phish:

a) You log in, then need to wait for an email with a code, and then need to give that to the browser before you are fully logged in. That's not good at all. Especially, since you have to do it EACH AND EVERY time you log in. Once I have confirmed once that I am the right before and it is not a bogus address I gave, I should be able to do this over and over. I guess its to discourage multiple people from using the same account to download, but still, its rather annoying.
b) When I downloaded the sample show a few months ago, I was able to download the whole thing in 3 zip files, one for each disc. That was very nice. That may still be the case, but with SHN files, you need to download each file individually, rather frustrating.
c) The download method is horrible. I need to right click on each file to download it. I should just be able to click on the file and it should download. If the MIME types on the server were set up correctly, that is what would happen.
d) No persistent cookies. As soon as I closed my browser I had to log in again. Due to the un-fun log in process I talked about in the first point, this was tedious. Give me a 24 hour cookie or something, so that if my browser crashes or something, I don't have to log in again, especially with the slow log in process.
e) Something timed out, I think, which caused me not to be able to download the last file in the set. Once I logged out and logged back in, it worked fine. Instead of giving me an error that the file was not available or to log in again, it just hung the download process (this could also be helped by not making me right click to download).

I think those are the big issues. I do think its AWESOME that I can download a show I went to 2 days after the show. I'll burn copies for myself later and have something to listen to while wandering around in Oralndo now. Grooving down the street may scare some of the old people down there though ;)

Allen gives me no love. :(

I had email last night that Live Phish had released the show I went to the other night. I immediately proceeded to attempt to download it. Well, downloading over a gig of data simultaneously over a 384k DSL line didn't work all that well. I think one file came through fully. So, as the day has gone along today, I have downloaded each song, one at a time while at work. Well, I got through both sets and now the encore song won't download. Argh!!!! It just sits there. I would REALLY like to make CDs of this show before I head to Florida, so getting this downloaded today would be key. Aieeee!

Though Lukas and Ethan are lucky enough to be heading to my home arena to see Phish again tonight, I still get to have some fun. Don and I are off to The Paradise to see Robert Randolph and the Family Band. I'm psyched up for this show, even though I am half asleep right now. I have not seen these guys in almost a year, so it will be good to hear some of their music, especially new stuff, since they are supposed to be having a CD coming out RSN.

Since I have to work on Sunday, it's going to be an early day at the office today, so hopefully I can get a little nap in before the show and it will really be a fun night.

Music in A Minor

So wrong, but so funny.

Last night I headed over to Worchester to see Phish. As I mentioned earlier, this was the first time I have seen them in a long time. Don and I had horrible seats behind the stage, but I was there for the music, not to stare at the boys.

Brian picked me up at work around 4 and we headed out. We went to the pub across the street from the Centrum. We had hoped to grab some dinner, but there were no seats. We had a few Guinness and finally decided to grab some Potato Skins. The place was getting crowded and I was supposed to meet Don around 7, so we headed out. I called Don and he said he was probably 10 or 15 mins out depending on how bad the traffic continued to be. Don FINALLY showed up an hour later and we headed in almost 30 mins after the show was supposed to start. Luckily it hadn't.

The show started off rather hot with "You Enjoy Myself". This got me all psyched up. The show turned from there and got rather slow in my opinion. They were playing a lot of songs that I didn't seem to know. The set continued rather slow for a while. They finally busted out 'Maze' and ended the set nicely with that. I was hoping for a better second set at this point.

The second set started off with Stash, which is a song I dig. It only got better from there. They seemed to keep building on the energy from the song before. They really got going with Waves in to Prince Caspian in to Frankenstein. At the end of Frankenstein, they switched to Golgi on the dime. They left the stage at this point. They came back on and did Loving Cup, which had the crowd going wild. This ended the show.

The second set BLEW the first set away. I definitely would have liked to hear some other songs I really enjoy, but that second set made it a good show.

After the show Don and I got right out and got home. When I got home, I checked online for the set list. It was then I figured out how special a first set we had. The band decided to cover songs from each of their side projects. I wish I knew some of this material a little better, I think it would have made the first set a bunch better.

All in all, a great show, but not as amazing as I could have hoped for. And now the setlist:

Set I: You Enjoy Myself* > Clone**, Roggae, Drifting***, Blue Skies****, The Moma Dance, Final Flight^, Maze

Set II: Stash, Ghost^^ > Makisupa Policeman^^^ > Ya Mar, Guyute, Waves, Prince Caspian^^^^ -> Frankenstein, Golgi Apparatus%

Encore: Loving Cup%%

* - vocal jam included the word "Clone" and the start of the song "Clone"
** - first time played - written by Mike Gordon and originally performed by Leo Kottke and Mike Gordon
*** - first time played - originally performed by Trey Anastasio
**** - first time played - originally performed by Pork Tornado
^ - first time played - originally performed by Vida Blue
^^ - with "Low Rider" tease / jam
^^^ - with the lyrics "Woke up this morning... and my hotel was burning down" - believed to be in reference to a hotel fire at the Radisson in Cincinnati
^^^^ - unfinished
% - with "Frankenstein" teases
%% - ending dragged out to finish the show

I'm not sure if this just DIDN'T cause an warning in MT before or if it is representative of a new problem, but has anyone seen a lot of failures trying to ping weblogs.com lately?

For the first time in almost 2 and a half years, I am going to see Phish. I haven't seen them since Vegas on their last tour before their hiatus. Now, I am not a huge Phish follower like some people I know, I have only seen them 4 times (all on that last tour).

As I have been thinking about this show over the last few days, I have come to realize how much those 4 shows, along with some others around that time have really changed the music I listen to. Change may not be the best word, expanded would probably be a better one. Some time in the late 90's, I had some pressure from a few different friends, mainly Mike and Don to come to see several "jam band" type shows. Mike finally got me to go see Phil and Fiends. I had a blast. I saw a few more Phil shows and then saw the 4 Phish shows. Seeing these shows and having a good time at that convinced me to see more similar shows. Over the years, I have gone to see bands like Gov't Mule, Robert Randolph and the Family Band, The Other Ones, John Butler Trio, and many others (mostly Don-suggested shows). Actually, these "jam band" shows have become more my normal show than anything else. I still go see Dream Theater any time they are in town, but other than that, I don't attend a ton of shows any more that are not "jam band" related.

Due to seeing all these shows, this music has become more and more of what I listen to. It's done a good job of expanding my tastes. Well, hopefully I and everyone else going this evening will have a good show.

well, damn boring. Some change in the CVS code of my aggregator broke it completely this morning. I submitted a bug straight away. It seems as if the coder works either while I am asleep or in the early morning, so hopefully it will get fixed in the morning. But, due to this, I was without one today, so I didn't read any of my blogs. Considering my blog roll is DAMN big these days, its going to mean A LOT of catch up tomorrow. Ugh.

I got the RATHER late word today that I am being sent to BEA eWorld next week. I am actually flying out Sunday morning and heading back on Wednesday. It will be interesting. The one really nice part, its in Orlando, FL. I actually get to get out of this cold for a few days! The high for tomorrow is 25 in Boston, mid-70s in Orlando. Yes, this part of the trip will be VERY nice :)

I just got word a little while ago that a good friend of mine is headed to the Middle East to serve. This makes me very nervous. I really don't know how I feel about this war right now and having good friends involved in it scares me every worse. I hope everything works out ok. Make it home safe, JJ.

This past Thursday, I was called for jury duty. As is the case EVERY day, I woke up late. Not too late luckily. I showered and dressed quickly and headed out. To make sure that I was going to be on time, I jumped a cab and headed downtown. I got there 20 mins before necessary, so I stopped and grabbed a soda. I headed in, went through all the metal detection fun and headed to the jury room. Once handing in my form and getting a number, I sat down. I was in group 10. People continued to fill in until after 8:30, even though we were supposed to be there by 8. I guess I didn't need to worry that much. Right around 9, we were told there was a judge on the way to give us some instructions. He showed, talked quickly, saying there were lots of potential trials today and having so many people here could make them settle quickly. I found that to be interesting, but I guess that is very true. If you KNOW you are going to start trial that day and there are definitely jurors for it, you may decide to take a plea or something. After the judge left, we watched a movie for about 20 minutes which pretty much went over the process of being a juror. After that, they nicely gave us a 30 minute break, which I used to go grab a couple of smokes and make some calls. Shortly after the break they called the first 8 groups. Whew! Well, that didn't last long, as my group and 3 others got called about 20 mins later. As is ALWAYS the case, I ended up on a jury. It was a civil case, which to me, is better than criminal as you don't have to worry about putting someone away. The case was a girl who fell in a restaurant and was suing the restaurant for negligience (sp?). It was about 12:30 by the time the case started. The nice thing we learned early on is that this judge only sees over court from 9-1 unless the jury is deliberating. So, we heard the opening arguements and were let go for the day.

The next day, I got up on time, so I took the T down to the courthouse. I got in around 8:30. Court started promptly at 9. We heard 2 witnesses. One for each side. Besides a 20 min or so break around 11, that went til noonish. After that, the 2 lawyers gave their closing statements. This put us to about 1. Because we were deliberating, we were allowed to go past 1 (which I think everyone was happy about, as they didn't want to come back for a third day). We had some lunch delivered, so we ate sandwiches and deliberated. After a quick vote, we were close. From what some of the people on the fence said, we got a clarification from the judge. After hearing the clarification, we were decided. We found for the defendant. Afterwards, the judge came in and spoke with us for a little bit and we were released. We got out around 3. Not bad at all.

All in all, a good experience. I'm two for two now. The first time I got called, I ended up on a criminal jury. That time, I ended up being an alternate, so I didn't get to go through the deliberations that time. It's an interesting process to see at work. At least you know that the justice system somewhat works. I definitely won't say it always does. Well, at least I don't have to do this again for at least 3 years (it was 5 this time).

A few days away from the blog due to jury duty and a busy weekend.

NY Daily News - Entertainment - A music industry case study - Good piece about how much money starting musicians REALLY make.

A very interesting, albeit extremely scary piece of fiction entitled If It Happened Here by Paul Ciotti. It's a piece about an weapons grade anthrax attack on Los Angeles. Though I can't tell if this was meant to scare the shit out of people or just to give people an idea of what happened, it did both for me. A good read though, as long as you aren't already very scared about this type of stuff.

Puck from the Real World is one of the houses they are showing tonight. Man, this show used to be fun to watch.

I have to do my civil duty tomorrow. I have no problem with doing it, its just that I have to be downtown at 8AM. Now, thats no fun at all. That means I need to be on my way by about 7AM. This means I need to be up by 6:30. This is going to be no fun whatsoever. Hopefully I will be able to get up good and early and have a fun day being a juror (or more hopefully NOT being a juror). I gotta decide whether or not I am going to bring my laptop and stuff. I'm not even sure if I am allowed to. I may just bring a book and my headphones and be done with it. We'll see what happens. More tomorrow.

So, I spent much of the weekend (5 days and counting ;) moving all my Internet presence to a combination of a new hosting company and my home machine. Everything seems to have propegated out there now and things are flowing well. I had spent much of the week before preparing for this move, and amazingly everything seems to have gone rather smoothly. Now I just need to tell everyone I swictched addresses and all should be well.

Take a look at this. If you look at the Do Not Enter sign, just below it, you will see some bits of a red car, that's mine. Ugh. And no shovel to boot. This is gonna SUCK.

I won't give it away, as it is not on yet on the West Coast, but that was THE WORST twist like ever. I thought something good was going to happen and no, just a weak little thing. That was most definitely a WASTE of 2 hours of my life.

Well, its snowing like crazy here. Depending on who you believe, we are expected to get somewhere between one and two feet by the time its all done tomorrow morning. Its wild out there right now, I can't even see the Pru.

I upgraded to Movable Type 2.62 this afternoon. Hopefully everything will work right.

My goal for the past week or so has been to attempt to organize my life. This started mainly with trying to organize my house some. I spent a ton of time doing laundry last week and got 9 loads done (Yes, I am a straigh male who has enough clothes to fill 9 loads of laundry and not even get it all done). I then started to try to find other things to organize. I broke down all the empty boxes which have been sitting in my room for much of the last year. I have yet to throw them away, but it was a step in the right direction. After that I continued over the weekend doing other small and large projects to try and get things organized. Now this organization has started to spread elsewhere. I am in the process of moving all my digital stuff to a more organized status. This was inspired by having to remove my stuff from the Internet provider I have used for pretty much 9 years now. Getting all this stuff organized is somewhat of a hassle, but I think in the end it will prove very worthwhile. Hopefully I can continue to get all this done until I really have my life organized. Its funny how a project to get some laundry caught up ended up being this much work, but I think it will be a very good thing for me in the end.

"I could fucking care less if everybody downloads our album off the Internet. We're not in a position to be screwed by that at all. We have the one thing the Internet can't touch -- live music. If you can actually go out and play your fucking instruments, you won't be replaced by the Internet. If you're a good live act and you put on a good show, people will buy a ticket to see your show." - Fishman (Drummer for Phish)

So, I noticed new packages are out for apache on RH 6.2 -> 8.0. So, I say, I should update. Best way to do this is to just run up2date (since I am reg'ed on RHN). I am SSH'ed in to my box, so I run the following command:

up2date-nox -u apache apache-devel

And I get the following error:

X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
Gdk-ERROR **: X connection to localhost:10.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).

Umm, shouldn't the -nox on the command mean NO X11 CONNECTION?!?!?! Does on any other application with that notation. Argh. Fuckin idiots. Now I either have to wait for this to show up in Red Carpet or else wait to get to the box, log in to X (which isn't even running on the system anymore) and run the damned thing in X. I know I have run up2date as a non-X application before, so what the hell is up with this?!?!

Update: It looks as if the up2date-gnome package installs some stuff in /usr/bin which then means the up2date binary in /usr/sbin doesn't get run. Seemingly the package is still broken because the -nox package should work fine, but the solution for now is to run /usr/sbin/up2date. And of course, the apache and apache-devel packages don't seem to EXIST at the moment. Argh.

In my never ending (and recently re-newed attempt) to get my apartment well set up, I finally set up my old reciever (which was replaced by my surround sound system last year) in my bedroom. I also hooked up my portable CD player to it. It was rather nice to play a mellow CD while reading and then going to sleep last night. I am such a huge music person, its nice to have it playing as often as possible. Now if I could only find the plug to my portable CD player, so I don't waste batteries when playing CDs in my bedroom.

I just found out that Hotel Skadz is opening a week from Friday. My sister just IM'ed me and told me that her and 4 of her friends are coming up to visit next weekend and are all staying here. It should make for an interesting time having 6 people staying in a one bedroom. Hopefully it will be a fun weekend at least :)

works for the RIAA. Check this out:

Cracker investigating what the CD burner is putting on to a CD

So, I got a bit behind on my cable payments and they turned my cable off at the box. With my last paycheck, I caught up and was happy to know my cable would be back on soon. On Wednesday, I came home, the cable was still off, but when I checked Homelink, I saw the check had cleared, so I called. The call went something like this:

Me: Hi, I caught up my bill, but my cable is still off, can you please turn it back on.
Cable Drone: Yes, I see your bill caught up, but your service is turned off at the pole.
Me: Well, I am still seeing the TV Guide channel (thats what stays on when your box is off)
Drone: You should have no service sir, your cable it turned off at the pole.
Me: OK, but I am seeing the TV Guide channel, so some signal is coming in, can't you try and turn the box back on.
Drone: No sir, the computer shows the service off at the pole, you will need a technician to come out.
Me: But, I have a signal.
Drone: No sir, its off at the pole, you will need someone to come out and re-connect it at the pole.

At this point, I gave up fighting and scheduled an appointment for a technician to come out on Friday (today)

Technician shows up today and finds the outside box. Its on the side of the building next door, probably 10-15 feet above the ground. It's snowing like a mofo today, so I say to the guy something like "Hey, I have a signal in my apartment, I am seeing the TV guide channel, want to check it before you climb?" Guy says that sounds good. Comes up, checks to make sure signal is there, it is, calls service center, on hold for 10 mins, finally says, I need a box turned back on, service center hits magic button, cable comes back up. Guy basically tells me the people at the service center should not be listened to and if it happens again, keep calling until someone turns the box back on.

The fun part is now I have to fuckin call and fight the technician visit charge ($20 more than the normal re-connect fee) because there was NO NEED for a technician to come out, much like I told the nice drone on Wednesday. Argh.

The Onion | Yankees Ensure 2003 Pennant By Signing Every Player In Baseball

They could have finally won a series if they did.

leads to another. My wonderful night last night (good dinner, 3 loads of laundry, some guitar, some GTA3, dishes, etc) lead to a good morning this morning. Got to work right around 9 (usually I get in between 10 and 10:30) and am good and awake unlike most mornings. Hopefully I can keep this streak going.

Damnit! I started fucking around with cheat codes tonight and turned on Riot Mode in GTA3. This would have been fun if I could a) figure out how the hell to turn it off or b) it turned off when I died. The problem is, I don't have a freakin memory card, so if I reset the thing, I have to start all over from the beginning again. Argh. Anyone have any clue of how to turn this off?!?!?!

after a home cooked meals is one of the best things in the world.

Just ate a great dinner of chicken, rice and salad.

Second load of laundry in the dryer, third in the washer.

Called and bitched at cable (more on that later)

Now if I can catch up some e-mail, play some guitar and play some GTA3, I will feel like this has been the night last night was supposed to be.

Read this artcle. Read it over and over again until it sinks in and makes sense. And then read it one more time, so it really sinks in.

This is one of the best pieces I have ever read in favor of file sharing and the RIAA and MPAA's stance on it. It makes clear arguments, points to a number of different sources and just makes sense. Anyone who is interested in this, should definitely go read it.

Thanks to Doc for the link.

Now this is maxing a system out:

CPU0 states: 57.4% user, 42.1% system, 0.0% nice, 0.0% idle
CPU1 states: 88.2% user, 11.2% system, 0.0% nice, 0.0% idle
CPU2 states: 89.0% user, 10.4% system, 0.0% nice, 0.0% idle
CPU3 states: 90.1% user, 9.3% system, 0.0% nice, 0.0% idle

Slashdot is running an interview with Kevin Mitnick based on questions from their readers. Overall, a good selection of questions and wonderful answers from Kevin. I thought his answers were all well thought out and written well. I find his loathing of John Markoff both very apparent and amusing. I feel he has a very good outlook on things considering what he went through. I hope he does well with his consulting and proves to people that what he did was nowhere near as bad as it was made out to be.

I downloaded the latest version of Evolution last night. I tried one of the things that has not worked correctly for me in the past (and actually caused a crash in the last version) and finally it worked right. I can now have my Mail Summary stay in Evolution. It used to just disappear. Woo. My second issue for a long time has been that the Shortcuts bar did not update correctly for my POP mailbox, so I had to check that from time to time just to see if there was mail in there. It now actually works! Yay! Finally, two of my oldest bugs are closed. Go Ximian. Now, I just wait for the GNOME2 version of it :)

Can I use this page to say my name was in Rolling Stone??

My plan for the evening was to be very productive. I had Peapod coming, I was gonna make some good dinner, do some laundry, watch 24, play some guitar, take out the garbage, play some GTA3, etc. Well, Peapod decided to show up more than an hour and a half LATE, so instead of getting all sorts of stuff done, I ended up sitting here, waiting for the Peapod guy to show up, starving with no motivation whatsoever. How FUCKING annoying. I guess tomorrow turns in to busy night. Ugh.

Kasia nails why some people love to program in her article, kasia in a nutshell: Programmers -- the abused profession? Its stuff like that rush of problem solving that makes me miss programming as much as I do sometimes. I keep trying to find some cool project to work on at home in my free time, but can't think of anything real good. I think I just need to spend some time and re-learn some C or even learn some Java or Python, so I can contribute to some of my favorite Open Source projects. I would really love to have that rush of getting stuff done again. If I could only find a project to keep my attention.

Dave is coming to Harvard next week to do a live version of his weblog. Could be very interesting. May have to stop by this one.

Just got this from my buddies Event:

New England based rock act EVENT will be releasing their third CD "Scratching
at the Surface" on March 11. A follow up to "Human Condition" again through
Inside Out Music in North America and Europe. EVENT provide listeners of all
types with pulse-pounding rhythms and groove laden hooks. The opening track
"Make Your Way" immediately reaches out and pulls you into this world of
cutting edge hard rock. Look for the band on your local radio and on tour in
the spring of 2003. for more info visit www.eventband.com and
www.insideoutmusic.com

PCWorld.com - Digital Music Fans Get a Break in Europe

I think it's time for me to start thinking about moving to Ireland again. I can drink real Guinness and download all the music I want :)

Since buying my PS2 last year, it has done a good job of collecting dust. I only got 2 games for it when I bought it, so I really haven't played it much. For Christmas, I asked for 2 more games, Madden 2003 and GTA3. I decided to ask for the original rather than Vice City because I hadn't played it and thought it would be a better introduction.

Both of these games have sat on the shelf since returning to Boston after Christmas due to a lack of time (and being away for 9 days for LinuxWorld).

This weekend, I finally decided to try GTA3. Well, oh my, I think I am in trouble. This game is awesome. I knew it had to be pretty good due to everyone talking about it for so long, but I didn't realize just how fun it might be. I played around for a couple of hours last night and a couple of hours again today. This is going to get me in trouble, I can tell already. But, what the hell, another outlet is always a good thing.

The space shuttle Columbia, the oldest in the fleet has exploded. NASA lost communication around 9AM EST and seemed to explode over Texas. The one sad thing at this point is that they have already made comments along the lines of "This was not a terrorist attack" It is sad in this day and age that people's first conclusion is that someone blew it up, rather than some mechanical error.