never knows best...

dry as toast

It is weird how MTV and Fuse and other music video channels sometimes pick up on bands that really would not get any normal radio airplay. Even though I did not see the Asobi Seksu video on MTV, it is on their site, so that is something at least.

The other random band that I can think of being played somewhat recently is The Rasmus, which is like a happy goth band, and who would be interesting if it were not for the fact that the leader singer's hair pisses me off. The other thing that made The Rasmus intersting is that I heard a mash up that was them, Modest Mouse, and some unidentifiable rap, and hearing that brought a smile to my face.

Schwarzenegger's speech at the convention was pretty interesting, if only becaues it was so random. He covered a lot of things that are not really all that high on the Republican agenda: AIDS in Africa, "best Americans" in California, it is okay to not agree with the core, the economy is doing okay, all sorts of other points. Maybe I just picked up on the random things, but those were the bits I picked out of his speech.

In other convention news, I should not have bothered to sit and listen to the Bush twins' talk because that was about as vapid as anything I have sat through in a while. Yay, bring on the name dropping!

Today feels odd. My first first day of school in a long, long time where I do not actually have to go to school. The notion of me not being in school anymore has started to hit the fan, but has yet to explode anywhere. It is a good thing my paycheck is coming in a couple of days to erase the feelings of awkwardness.

The time sink that is the Olympics is now over... Best Olympic event? Women's volleyball. Watching the Chinese come back over the Russians was a pretty fun game to watch, especially because it remained close the whole time, not like beach volleyball where May and Walsh just dominated. Watching the Russian coach bitch out his team was pretty good TV as well. It would have been all the better if those Chinese volleyball players were hot, but some things have to give.

Well the Republican National Convention will provide some solid TV watching in the coming week, TV and I will still be close friends.

I work my shopping cart through the busy Costco just like how I work my car through traffic. Lots of maneuvering, lots of acceleration, and lots of near crashes.

The McLaughlin Group really is one of the shows I am trying to watch regularly now. I think that part of the appeal is this SNL skit that I still remember where McLaughlin just keeps on arguing with everyone, which he does do, and calling Pat Buchanan Pattie Pattie Buch Buch, which he does not do. But that show is about the only way I keep up with current political events and 30 minutes a week is something I can do, especially on lazy Friday nights or Sunday afternoons.

Berkeley caves in and offers discounted Rhapsody service to its students... Aside from the wrongness of legitimizing the RIAA and its scare tactics, it is a pretty decent deal: $2 a month for unlimited music streaming. Well, at least the school is being nice about it and not forcing it upon everyone like a lot of the other schools that signed deals with music services did.

Reiser4 finally graces us with its presence! If only I was running Gentoo, I would promptly recompile everything just to use that fantastical file system...

Oh, and I am just browsing Dealership's site to get tonight's songs. Relatively nice stuff. I remember when they performed at Lower Sproul a couple years back, I really appreciate the bands that bother to play out there in the cold and cloudy weather for free.

One more reason to start working out: so I can properly clean the pressure cooker. The weight of that pot was killing my wrist.

Oh god is Cal sports advertising cheesy: "You better bring plenty of butter because..... you're gonna be on a roll for two days!" But, it does remind me that I should buy some football tickets before they sell out. I will probably check out the Oregon and maybe the Big Game if I am feeling flush with cash at the time.

It is sad that I already feel like sleeping. My bedtime seems to be creeping up earlier and earlier, soon I will be back in my high school form where I went to sleep by 11:30 every night.

I got to see Alton Brown's presentation, it was decently nice, though I did not get any food or autographed merchandise out of it. But it was still good enough of a use of a couple hours of my Saturday, although I doubt I will ever bother to make beef jerky or pate a choux. Ah, I love qualifying everything that I say.

Media backed populist presidential candidate versus Illuminati backed cyborg presidential candidate is sorta what Interface seemed to be turning out to be at the one third point. But now, it has turned away from that, and turning away from that does not prevent it from being interesting anyways. It is still the vintage nerdiness that Neal Stephenson, this time going under the pen name Stephen Bury, provides to an appreciative Nick, notwithstanding Quicksilver. And reading this book is enough to make me motivated enough to trudge over to Berkeley for his book signing at Cody's September 29.

Just heard it on Live 105. I remember it from when they played it way back when, but I did not remember it being such a nice song. Maybe I was just too anti-STP back then, probably still am.

Alton Brown, your hero and mine, is appearing at Stanford Shopping Center this Saturday. I must go to get his autograph or something, or at least try to grab some food he prepares.

In totally unrelated news, my '95 Dodge Neon finally rolled over 70000 miles. And, at my current rate of ~130 miles a day, soon enough it will catch up to the amount of miles a vehicle of that age should have.

Hurray for Natalie Coughlin and her gold medal winning! In other Olympics news, it is surprisingly fun to watch, I do not remember staying this glued to the TV the last time it showed. It is probably because not being away at school makes these sorts of things more watchable.

Natalie's winnings will hopefully translate into total Cal dominance in all sports. She is only an alumnus, but still, it bodes well for the coming school year. It makes me feel sad that I will not be in the stands for many games this year. Maybe, I really should have forked over the cash to get those alumni seats, well I will probably try to catch the Oregon game at least.

Explosions in the Sky are having a concert at Cafe du Nord in October, I must go even though it conflicts with a RJD2 concert. Why are there not any interesting concerts in this time of the year?

On the CD buying front, I am planning on picking up the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Fever to Tell, kinda joining the band wagon late, I know, but since I heard Y Control on the radio, I now know that I will be able to enjoy at least 2 tracks from the CD, and that is generally good enough for me. That, Snow Patrol, and M83 are currently on the "To Buy" queue. I am not looking all that far ahead for anything that has not been released yet, just looking for October when Explosions in the Sky and Mono drop on by.

I would like to think that washing dishes is my equivalent to some Murakami protagonist or another's ironing: a calming activity that provides time to think. Washing dishes sure as heck provides a lot more time for reflection than most of the other activities I take part in. And, it is a pretty useful activity to undertake, though since I am at home I could just leave it to my dad to do, but I should do chores, seeing as I am freeloading quite a bit. I do wish ironing was my "ironing," so to speak, because I suck at iron, it would be nice to be good at it. Crummy shirts and pants will not stay wrinkle free.

So, just what was I reflected about as I washed dishes? Mostly, just that I did not accomplish many of my summer goals, though I rarely accomplish many of my goals, maybe I really should put some effort into reading that book about execution that the bank gave me. Anyhow, in the 1.5 months I count as my summer, I did not do much other than read, sleep, watch TV, which did not align with my goals, but I did them anyways. In fact, even if I wasted time playing games that would be more aligned with my goals than watching TV. So, that is what I reflected about.

The closed nature of my recollections disappoints myself. It is more like recollections come and go, and get teased at but in the end do not get recorded here or anywhere.

It is all about the Stockholm Syndrome.

My first week of commuting is over. It was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, in fact I have grown to enjoy driving again. With only 2 slow spots, most of my hour or so of driving consists of fun-filled weaving through traffic on the slightly hilly 680. I remember really enjoying the driving experience when I was in high school, but whenever I drive back and forth between Berkeley and Cupertino, I always considered it to be a chore. Now, it is all fun again, enough so that I do not feel tired when I get to or back from work.

On my drive, I have found a couple more radio stations too. There is a dance station at 92.9 centered around San Jose, and a alternative rock focused college radio station cenetered around Concord at 90.5. The only bad thing about my commute is that morning radio sucks, and college radio has not been of much help either, so I end up listening to the classical station just cause that seems to be the only stationi playing more music than talk or commercials.

My recollections are slow on the uptake.

My AHA! moment for the day: coffee stirrers can be used as chop sticks, which can then be used to eat the wedding shower cake of some coworker I do not know. Resourcefulness is the key to survival.

My work notebook got all fixed up today, it took two days, but I do not have to spend the day reading server manuals anymore. Bring on the computer training!

In other news, I miss how I could go for weeks without shaving. Part of it was that I just do not get facial hair, the other part was that I also did not worry about looking clean shaving. But now, it is like every 2, 3 nights, I am a night time shaver because I am lazy in the mornings, I have to shave. Blades do not last years like they used to. It is a good thing I am still using Gillette's old tech SensorExcel because at least I am not getting too screwed when buying replacements.

Blogger finally felt it proper to grant me a Gmail account. Not that I care anymore, but hurray more webspace to attempt to exploit!

New Social D in September, hurray!

Hmm... running screen remotely within a screen does not work that well, I will have to rethink how elite I am.

AFI covering NIN, very weird... Even weirder the clip I heard sound almost exactly the same as the original version. Hurt worked out well for Johnny Cash, though that is actually a really good song. Head Like A Hole is not nearly as cool of song, but it is not bad, all the luck to AFI in its covering efforts.