An Eve with the Orchestra

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I’ve been a little remiss in not posting this sooner, but I’ve been a trifle busy.

Last Wednesday, the WBGF once again proved her greatness by getting us tickets to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra show for the third year running.

In previous years, we have been seated both stage-left and -right, but this year she decided we needed to see the show from down in the floor seats, which was tremendously cool. It’s actually the closest I have ever been to the stage at a large show. I didn’t think it would really make all that much of a difference, since there isn’t a difference in the sound really, but it was great to actually be able to see their faces for once.

As always, the show rocked mightily. How could it not? Where else are you going to hear Bethoven, Liszt and other greats performed not only by a truly good orchestra, but by a heavy-metal band, with fireballs blasting away like a war zone?

The show may be the same album every year, but they keep adding other elements to keep the folks coming back. Take Anna Phoebe, the string maestro for example: the first year I saw the show, she was not your mild-mannered violinist, often roaming around the stage as she got into particular bits. The second year, she took a more dominant stance, seeming more a member of the rock band than the symphony. This year, she was a full-on rock goddess, with all the attitude of an axe-slinging metal-head – never mind that her ‘axe’ is a vibrant pink electric violin.

They ended the show with both Angus and Anna running through the crowd and onto a cherry-picker, where they were hoisted 20 feet into the air during “Christmas Eve in Sarejevo” – neither one of them missed a note.

Speaking of axe-work, Angus Clark has been taking pages from Al Pitrelli’s style by incorporating more elements of other great players into the live show. Now I’m not talking about lifting sections of work from other players; I mean they have learned to play the style of guys like Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page, and I think even a little Satriani. This is hard to do, folks. Any good technical guitarist can play another man’s work, but to play an original piece as if the other man’s fingers were on the frets takes talent. What I would love to hear them do next time is expand John Lee Middleton’s bass part – the show only has a few places where his work stands out from the rest.

I really can go on and on about these artists, but I’ll try and move along here.

Vocals: I don’t have the words, so I’ll use the words of Tommy Farese (a damn good singer himself): “Michael Lanning is the most Soulful White man on the planet.” Guy LeMonnier is a joy to the ears, and I wish he had a larger part in the show. Jill Gioia has the largest voice ever packed into so small a person, and Kristin Gorman can hit notes so perfectly it’s amazing – all while bouncing around the stage the same way Angus and Anna do.

TSO also has the blessing of having not one, but TWO of the best keyboard players in the world: Jane Mangini and Carmine Giglio. The dueling they do before “Christmas Liszt” is phenomenal. It’s truly a shame that touring is too hard on pianos; I’d love to hear them on a couple of full Grands. Since the piano is really a percussion instrument, I’ll segue here into John O. Reilly’s drum work – outstanding. As one man, he does what takes most orchestras 4 individual musicians.

Okay, I think I’ve praised them all enough, now for the bitching: When do we get another tour?!? Yes, we love the Christmas show – but we all know you guys have more than one album. Get it out on the road already!!

How ’bout that weather we’re having?

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As I sit here listenning to my nipples freezing up and cracking, I have to wonder: who the fuck authorized all this cold weather? I didn’t vet this. Clerk!!

Of course, it doesn’t help me any that Ratboy is of the firm belief that his comfort is paramount to everyone else’s. Since he runs warmer than the rest of us, this is a problem – I’ve caught him twice this week with a fan in his window letting out all my expensive heat. His response? “Well, turn the thermostat down to 60 so I’m comfortable.”

Can’t. Strangle. Children.

I spent the first 18 years of my life in homes with wood heat, which means that it was always cold in the mornings. To hell with that – I will keep my house to a temperature where it is not unreasonable to walk around the house barefoot.

In other news, tommorow night is the annual Trans-Siberian Orchestra show, and I am again looking forward to it. Yeah, it will probably be the same show as the last two years – so what? How many people see the Nutcracker every year? I can’t stand ballet (unless it’s my daughter.)

Yup, outta steam again…
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Recipe for an evening wit Da Boys:

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Take 1 Honey Baked Ham, add mashed taters and yams, garnish with fresh-made cranberry sauce. Fresh veggies with ranch dip for appetizers.

Blow shit up on your computers for next three hours.

Ahh. Sunday afternoon happiness.

This is our second run with the new MekTek 3.0 patch, which was raised to bugfix version 3.0.1 recently. Changes include Inner Sphere weapons getting shorter reload times to offset the extra tonnage.

New weapons include a massive railgun, which takes up 7 slots of space – currently, there are only two mechs that can mount it: the Behemoth II and the Marauder II. The gun rides as a dorsal mount, and does 56 damage every 10 seconds. If used properly, it will knock down an Atlas.

Muahahahahaha!

For those who like energy mounts to go with your insanely overpowered ballistics, take the Behemoth. For bullet-gunners like myself, you’ll prefer the Marauder.

Other changes include a new variation on the Omni weapon mount: the “Direct-Fire” slot, which will take any non-missile weapon. This breathes a little new life into several mechs I had not looked at before. (I hate trying to manage heat, I just want something to go boom whenever I pull the trigger.)

Some of the new ‘Mechs don’t really even qualify as ‘Mechs – I’m talking about the Elementals. This patch brings out a dozen or so Battle Armors, with a new bunch of weapons to outfit them with. Want a challenge? Take six of these out against a pair of assault ‘Mechs. It gets messy, since these guys tip the scales at a measly 20 tons, and can be squished like tanks.

In all, three hearty cheers to the fine folks over at MekTek for continuing to provide excellent content and variations to a solid game. And they do it for FREE! You – go donate now!

Updates and the usual whatnot

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I seem to have been a bit remiss in my postings. Ok, to bring you up to date:

That weekend with the fucktard programmer in Washington was followed by a Monday. That’s all I’ll say about that.

Tuesday was one of those days that starts out bad and gets worse form there. I very nearly got into a fistfight with my boss in a customer’s parking lot because he wanted me to strap a ladder to the roof of my car. Heaven forbid any of us employees balk at the idea of causing physical damage to our vehicles in the name of the Company. How I managed to get through that day without killing someone I don’t know.

Wednesday wasn’t so bad – another wiring gig, but no insulation in the ceiling and all the jack locations had holes pre-cut so it went pretty quickly. This job will get more fun later when I have to dismember the client’s existing phone system and move it to the new office. Finish off Wednesday with a pre-Turkey Day mini feast starring TWBGF and an evening vegging in front of the tv with no arguments, strife or other unpleasantness. Yes, an excellent evening indeed.

Thursday started off wonderful – see Wednesday evening. Finished off Turkey Day at the EMC’s place for copious amounts of excellent grub, good people and general happiness. My former sister-in-law seems to have gotten over whatever ill-will she held for me in the past, which is very cool.

Friday I did as little as possible until I picked my sweetie up from work. This brings us to today, in which I again did as little as possible, and most of what I did do involved playing with my daughter Pookie.

Yep, just a whirlwind of excitement around here. Then again, this is the closest thing I have had to a vacation in over a year, so I’m getting the most I can out of it.

Why, you little…!!!

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So, Saturday morning up at dawn to drive up to Lakewood Washington (known for it’s ..umm… fog?) to “get the player tracking software installed and running.”

Yeah, right.

Bossman and I arrive at 9am to discover that the programmer who is doing this did not catch the flight last night due to ‘a problem with the plane’ and instead caught a morning flight. Okaaay…

So, we’re here, what’s the server doing? Been turned off because there was no reason to have it on for the last three months? Ok, that makes sense. How about the end terminals? Been turned off and stuffed into kiosks for a year-and-a-half because they bought them waaaay to soon? Okay, they’ll need updates then.

10am- Proggy rolls in. 11:30am- Proggy is finally ready for a meeting, but his laptop drive just kerplooied due to extreme age. That was his development environment. Casino manager takes this amazingly in stride. Break for grubbage.

12:30pm- Proggy decides that current network infrastructure has somehow been changed in ways he does not like, and we must re-arrange certain things to bring everything on to one network. Comes up with stupid reccomendation which we ignore, and simply install a second NIC on the server. *Poof*- Marketing now has access. And you were saying…?
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The populace has nothing to fear – except itself

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The World’s Best Girlfriend and I met up at the mall the other night to do a little shopping and grab a quick bite to eat in the food court. We were happily munching away when a minor altercation between a group of young black men started up in the open area in front of the theaters. It seemed like nothing at first, but I kept my eye on them just the same.

Sure enough, the minor incident escalated into a full fistfight between at least three people, and started drifting over toward us. Patrons seated nearest the scuffle jumped up and ran away. The WBG smartly moved around to keep our table between herself and the action (her back was to them originally, with no protection) but otherwise stood her ground. I stood up and stepped behind my chair when they got within 10 feet.

What none of the other patrons saw as they all ran away was that this was nothing more than greasy kid stuff. These were not hardened gang-bangers trying to kill each other, these were teenagers burning off testosterone. The blows they managed to land all hit soft targets, and even then did no real damage. The kid that got the worst of it hopped back onto his feet when it was over and was more worried about whether his pants were falling down than any potential bruises.

I’ve gotten hurt worse rough-housing with my older brothers.

What does this mean, when only two of about 15 people are brave enough to stand their ground in the face of adversity? It means I think public schools need to be teaching basic hand-to-hand, or at least situational awareness. If an invading force were to hit the beaches of America today, I wouldn’t be counting on my neighbors to help defend our block.

Okay, I could count on two of them, but that’s because I know how many swords they own. You get my point.

You know you spend too much time gaming when…

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We have a dual monitor setup on our shop gaming rig, so people outside can see what cool things it can do. I go out for an after-lunch smoke, and wander over to see what mayhem KG is unleashing, only to see him going through his wardrobe in Matrix Online. I finally lean back in and yell at him.

ME- “Dude! Quit playing Pretty-Princess-Dress-Up and go splatter something already!” (KG is cross-dressing currently and playing a female character.)
KG- “I can’t!” He says, “I’ve got to go to an in-game wedding.”
ME- “You’re shitting me.”
KG- “No, my faction leader is getting hitched in twenty minutes.”
ME- “In-game.”
KG- “Yeah.”
ME- Blink. Blink. Blink.
KG- “I just hope the Bride doesn’t try to make me her Maid Of Honor.”

Weekend Update

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Time for a stream-of-consciousness post kids. Hang on to something…

Moderately-crappy workday turns into free parking downtown and giving the GF a ride home from work, where she mixes up good eats whilst I wash dishes. I’m a good boy, I work for my supper.

Again, I either need longer days or a third weekend-day added to the calendar. Not enough time to do all the things I want. Ok, I’ll settle for building another bedroom into my house. Or somewhere Pookie can watch Fraggle Rock without me. It could have been worse, at least she doesn’t have that stupid Amanda Show DVD anymore.

Went through and re-did the crappy wiring job on The Beastie’s stereo, maybe it will stop dropping the left channel now. And the power.

Speaking of re-works, blew out the SuSE install again, this time it didn’t crash when I upgraded KDE to 3.5 beta. Arts still sucks. And I can’t get Scorched 3D to run. I’ll have to mess with that symlink sometime…

AMV Hell: The Movie. Watch it. DBZ overlaid with Whitney Houston. Just try not to snort your soda.

A note to innie-to-outtie transexuals: stright boys don’t wear cute shoes. You paid the money for the transformation, follow through with it. Oi.

Pastor of Muppets

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Frizzen Sparks is out to make me spew tea out my nose. Go. Read. Now.

Pastor of Muppets, of stuffed talking things
All of Henson’s spawn now kiss my ring
Baptized by me in a stage prop hot spring
With Statler and Waldorf heckling
(Statler: “You call that a sermon?? What is this,
vacation bible school?!?”)
Pastor
Pastor
With Statler and Waldorf’s damned heckling
(Waldorf: “I’ve been more inspired by things
I’ve found in my navel! That’s it, I’m converting to Islam!”)

Dover school board booted out

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From The Register:

All eight Dover, Pennsylvania school board members up for re-election have been booted out after introducing intelligent design to the science classroom. In their place are a number of those who campaigned against the policy.

Three cheers for Dover, PA!

To the commentor from the previous post, who says that nasty little annoyances like mosquitos, fleas and the fossil record are “a test of faith”:

Faith that keeps you going when everything is against you is a wonderful thing. I wholly applaud those whose personal faith in their God allows them to overcome odds and obstacles in their life.

Faith as an excuse for not using your brain or thinking for yourself is a crime against humanity. Just because the clergy are in the habit of referring to their constituents as a ‘flock’ does not mean you should be sheep! Cramming that faith down the gullet of children in a publicly-funded school curriculum is a clear viloation of the First Amendment to the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. To wit:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

You can argue that the school board is not Congress, or that ID is not favoring an establishment of religion due to the omission of the phrase “by God” in the official thesis. The truth of the matter is that ‘Intelligent Design’ is just the Creation story with some pretty makeup on. This is a subject that should not be taught in public schools. To satisfy your complaint that science teachers should teach that Darwinism is not the only theory, I propose that all science textbooks henceforth contain the following:

“Not everyone believes in the Darwin Theory of Evolution”

Science classes are where we go to learn science, not religion. I leave that to the qualified folks down at the local center of worship.