Remember no man is a failure who has friends.
I was flipping through the February copy of Better Homes and Gardens this evening, and came across the latest celebrity Got Milk? ad… Later, while paging though Family Fun magazine, whose ad did I come across again, with a big milk moustache? Hmmmm…
What was it, like 25 years ago she was at her modeling peak? Even now, all I can say is, absolutely.
Just got back a little while ago from W.’s Cub Scouts den meeting – the wolves made birdhouses and learned about tools tonight.
I came across a photo from the Pinewood derby, of W.’s car in action on the track. It clearly shows just how far ahead of the rest of the field W.’s car was:
That’s W. on the left, watching his Green Monster car out in front.
Over the years, I’ve used many different desktop aplications to listen to audio files, as well as manage my vast library of digital audio files. RealPlayer. Real Rhapsody. Musicmatch. Windows Media Player. iTunes. I’ve used them all at one time or another. Until very recently, I’d been mostly using RealPlayer because of its integration with Yahoo Music Jukebox and Radio; however, with Yahoo Music Jukebox switching over to Rhapsody this past summer, I’ve been thnking about exactly what is the best application for my needs…
I’m running Windows Home Server on a separate standalone file server for all of my audio, video, picture files, which is accessible by my desktop and laptop PCs as well as E.’s notebook. It’s been working out OK as far as having one consolidated place for all of these media files, but each PC has been using its own application to access and utilize the files. The problem is that each application has it’s own way of creating and managing metadata about the audio files, which are not necessarily consistent. For example, iTunes will automatically update whatever it believes to be the album art for a file, even if it does not agree with what Windows Media Player or RealPlayer thinks the album art is. iTunes will also rearrange file locations and directory structures in its own unique way.
To help eliminate these inconsistencies, I want to standardize on one application for the audio files particularly, and although I’m not a big iTunes or iPod fan I’m probably leaning toward iTunes, for it’s ability to easily export my entire library into an XML file, but I’m curious to know if anyone else has faced a similar situation and how it was decided.
This coming Saturday night, TFS/LFS is holding their slightly delayed 2008 Holiday dinner event; I get to accompany E. over to Morristown for an evening of dining at Arthur’s Tavern (ok, it’s technically in Morris Plains, but whatever…) So a great big thank you goes out to every person who financed a Toyota or Lexus in 2008 – I will be thinking of you while I enjoy my medium-rare steak and a large glass of Fetzer “Barrel Select” Cabernet Sauvignon. Of course, it was a down year for the auto industry in general and even Toyota brought out the red ink for this past quarter, so this does not quite compare to 2007’s Holiday Fest when we spent the weekend in Mystic, CT and took in some gambling at Mohegan Sun, again courtesy of all of those Toyota and Lexus buyers. Oh well, here’s to better times in 2009.
In the meantime, we’re trying to squeeze in a side-trip to the cinema after dinner, since it’s been like, I don’t know, maybe 5 years since we saw a movie in an actual movie theater alone,just the two of us (I think we saw the first Pirates of the Caribbean by accident, after intending to catch some other movie that was either sold out or we missed the showing, but Johnny Depp made it a pretty serendipitous viewing.) I’m leaning toward Slumdog Millionaire over in Chatham. Anyone have any suggestions?
wow – I absolutely love this blog, and I love the internet for allowing this person to share so much about so many things that I also love. the other day, the missus and I were debating the openness that the internet presents to people who just want to share a little bit about themselves with the great void; my point was that it is a great thing, but E.’s counterpoint was that it’s just too strange for words. my wife is not a blogger. however, one read of some posts and a couple of photos, and this blog is one that she will also absolutely love. LOVE.
Free at last, thank God almighty, we’re free at last.
Talk about a March on Washington, do you see that crowd on the Mall? The whole world is watching… Great invocation, followed by the Queen of Soul herself… free at last… omg my heart is beating so fast this so exciting… Biden has been sworn in… one of my favorite songs, the Shaker hymn… Anthony McGill, Yo Yo Ma, Gabriella Montero, and Itzhak Perlman… it is a Gift To Be Simple… here comes John Roberts…
The wait is finally over… George W. Bush is finally no longer the President of the United States… Barack Obama has been sworn in as the 44th President of the United States… Oh don’t the words “former President Bush” just roll off the tongue… I’m giggling, I’m beside myself, this is so good…
It’s been a very long eight years living in the evil empire, now let’s get back to a Presidency that actually cares about the American people and the world in general… we are ready to lead once more… a new way forward… kindness, and selflessness… eyes on the prize, baby… eyes on the prize… Elizabeth Alexander, Praise song for the day… Praise song for walking forward in that light…
We’ve received more snow in the past few days than I can recall in a long time. It seems like we’re getting snow on an almost daily basis, and at least 1-2 inches each time. That’s kindof good news, in that the temperatures are actually low enough for the ice rink to freeze up. Here’s the latest picture, taken earlier this evening, with some snow accumulating on the frozen surface.
The kid also had some backyard fun this afternoon playing in the snow, even if they couldn’t yet use the rink.
So much for the Eagles season and their chance to play in the Super Bowl… Cardinals win the NFC Championship 32-25 and will meet the Steelers on February 1.
Only 26 days until Spring training starts. Go Phils!
More snow last night, but daytime temperatures projected to be in the upper 20s and 30s through tht rest of this week will probably keep the ice rink from freezing for some time.
So after coming home from yesterday morning’s Pinewood Derby, I spent most of the afternoon assembling the backyard ice rink. I picked a new location from last year, since the yard is so unlevel in that spot; this year’s location so far seems much better. So, it was pretty cold yesterday afternoon (it was -6 F yesterday morning) and since the boards had been sitting outside for the past year they were pretty well frozen, which made them a bit heavier and harder to drill the decking screws to attach them together, but by around 5:00PM the rink was assembled. At that point I did not want to put in the tarp and start filling it up, since I wasn’t really sure how long filling would take, and since I was essentially frozen myself at that point I did not want to hang outside anymore. I put in the tarp and called it a day.
I knew that there was a chance of snow last night, and sure enough when I took a blurry look sans glasses out the window this morning at the backyard on my way downstairs there was about 2 inches of snow in the rink. I finally got around to setting up the hose and filling the rink today. I put much less water in this year, as I think last year’s rink never froze solid enough for us to use because it never really got cold enough to freeze so much water. I really wish that I had setup the rink earlier, since it has really been such a cold winter thusfar, but we’ll see what happens this year. Also, using a white tarp would reflect much more sunlight than the blue one that I use, but that will need to be an improvement for next year. I did finally try out my homemade rink rake just to make sure water flows through it as expected (it does) to use as a little handheld zamboni for surface repairs.
My work is now done – 10 minutes until the NFC Championship game… go Eagles!
And the winner is… W. Really. His car blew away his Wolf Den competition and he won all 4 races by a wide margin to take the 1st Place trophy. In the final overall Champtionship race, held among the 1st place winners of the Tigers, Wolves, Bears, Webelos (2 dens) W. finished in 4th place.
Not too bad for W’s first Derby! Thanks to his 1st place finish, we move on now to the district races to be held in late March!
Tomorrow morning is the annual BSA Pinewood Derby. Since W. only joined Cub Scouts this past year, it will be our first derby; also since W. only joined Cub Scouts this past year, we had completely forgotten about the derby until one day last week when we received an email at home about the pre-derby workshop being held last Saturday. Unfortunately for us, we were not able to make the workshop, and we had given absolutely zero point zero thought to any actual design for W.’s derby. Until this past Tuesday night, this is what W.’s car looked like:
I felt pretty bad in not having done anything at all with the derby kit we received like 3 1/2 months ago; would it be OK to just bang some wheels on the block as-is and call it our derby entry? Probably not. Besides, being W.’s first derby I wanted to make sure we were doing it right. I had no idea how much work other kids were putting into their cars, but knew I did not want W.’s to look like it was made by an amateur (which of course, he is.) Thankfully, 10 years ago my in-laws had the foresight to present me with a scroll saw for Christmas; I ran out at lunch over to the scout store in Dayton to pick up everything I ever wanted to know about Pinwood Derby car plans, rules and regulations; and I was able to pick up a brand new Dremel tool on the way to work on Wednesday. By Friday afternoon, this is what W.’s car looked like:
Now, however, I felt bad in that we didn’t start working on this sooner, since most of the work was done by myself, downstairs in my workshop late at night after W. was in bed. About the only involvement he had was in selecting the paint color, and applying the number 1 sticker to the car. He does think it’s a pretty cool car though, and even if we don’t win the derby for fastest car, we’ve got a shot at best-looking. Personally, I think we did a kick-ass job, considering I put this thing together from scratch while learning the rules about lengths and weight and how to polish the axles and lubricate with graphite… we’ll see how the races go tomorrow when they kick-off at 9:00 AM. Even if we win nothing, we both learned a lot in the process, and we’ll be all the more prepared for 2010.
It was nearly Fall, 1978, and I had just recently started what was to be my junior year in high school. Earlier that summer, I had fulfilled two of my purchase obligations to Columbia House record club by picking up Billy Joel’s Turnstiles, and Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run. I had been familiar with Bruce and the album’s title track ever since 1975; I can still remember riding in the back seat of Coach Jack Brent’s car, crossing the Trenton Makes bridge from New Jersey back into Pennsylvania after our grade school soccer team lost to Marie Katzenbach School for the Deaf by something like 8 to 1. Terry McGovern urged Mr. Brent to turn up the radio as the song’s beginning drumroll, guitar and saxophone muscled through the car’s stereo speakers. It wasn’t long thereafter when Bruce appeared on the covers of both Time and Newsweek (in the same week) but for some reason I did not pay much attention to Bruce or his music. I was in the 8th grade, still being weaned on Elton John and his non-stop string of 70’s pop hits. Bruce Springsteen was not a pop star – he was too rough around the edges for my tastes. Having been prevented by court order from releasing any new recordings while Bruce fought his then manager for nearly two years, Bruce fell off of my radar screen.
Jump forward to the summer of 1978. I had graduated from 8th grade in 1976 and was soon to be a 15-year-old high school junior with raging hormones and a lot of growing pains. My musical tastes were still pop-oriented, but had grown more diverse in the previous two years. And so it was in mid-summer 1978 when I placed my turntable’s needle to the black vinyl LP and lay back on my bed for my first listen to Born To Run. I’m not sure if I had ever heard any of the songs before, but I do know that after listing to the complete album, I was blown away. I promptly fell off my bed, flipped the album over, and listened to it again… and again. I was immediately a Bruce Springsteen fan.
Jump forward a few months. It was mid-September and I was watching some forgotten show on TV when a commercial came on. It was completely silent, except for the sound of a typewriter “typing” on the TV screen something about a Bruce Springsteen live radio concert to be broadcast on Philadelphia’s Q102 (WIOQ) on September 19th, in support of his new album Darkness On The Edge of Town. I immediately made a note of the date and time, and anxiously waited for the night of the 19th to arrive. I had my cassette deck and blank tapes ready to record the show in its entirety: all of the pre-show DJ banter, all of Bruce’s onstage comments and intros to the songs, everything. When Bruce and the E Street Band hit the stage that Tuesday night, I was waiting. For nearly 3 hours, I recorded the complete show, except for one song: Thunder Road. The first side of the tape simply ran out. I wrote down the complete set list with the song name (or what I thought was the name, as some songs were totally new to me and to the rest of the audience as well.) Once the show was finished, I knew immediately that I had witnessed something truly special: Bruce and the band were at their absolute finest, and the radio broadcast was near perfect. I listened to the tapes for a while, my own little piece de resistance. It wasn’t until much later, nearly a year, when I began to share my tapes with some schoolmates. I edited the tapes down to remove the DJ banter before the show, at intermission, and between encores. I made copies of copies to assemble the entire concert chronologically on one tape. I let some friends borrow the tapes. Eventually, the tapes degraded, became garbled when they were chewed up inside various tape decks. What had once been a pristine capturing of the entire Capitol Theatre show became virtually unlistenable. Some years later, around 1981, in an Afton Avenue record shop I found a vinyl copy of the show preserved on 3 discs, but all of Bruce’s onstage song intros had been edited out, and the recording just lost its magic.
Jump forward 20 years. September 19, 1998 is my wedding date – coincidence? Jump a year or two later and internet file sharing through services such as Audio Galaxy, Kazaa, and of course Napster, were suddenly facilitating the sharing of all kinds of files but mostly .mp3 formatted audio files of songs that had not previously been available anywhere else. Suddenly, what was once old was now new again, including old radio concert broadcasts from 1978 of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey. Every track, including the onstage banter. I do not know who it was that shared these tracks, but I am eternally grateful to be able to listen once again to the complete show recording, almost exactly as I had now 30 years ago, and to be able to share this show recording with those who might have missed it the first time, or maybe forgot exactly how perfect this show really was. It is my pleasure to share it with you now.
Later released on 1980’s The River.
All I can say is, “Wow!” A scorching 2 minute intro by Roy Bittan, Bruce and Max Weinberg is followed by an explosive rendering of this song; the song ends where it started, with Bruce and Miami Steve Van Zandt trading powerful leads.
Bruce relates the story of the inspiration for the Thunder Road title between songs…
Bruce interacts with the home crowd, who bestow on him gifts for his upcoming birthday on September 23rd; he opens one gift printed on green and white fan-fold tractor feed paper, which he takes to be a letter indicating “You bank account is overdrawn.” It is actually an old mainframe computer-generated portrait of the Boss. He indicates, “What a likeness!” He receives another gift of a hat, and replies, “It fits too! How’d you know my head was so big?”
Break
Bruce opens the second part of the show with a song “for all the folks in Philadelphia who are listening in”
Again, wow. This is sung with a different lyric than as written when Bruce gave the song to Patti Smith and the band matches the energy of Prove It All Night from the first part of the show.
Later released on 1980’s The River with re-written lyrics. This version is sung with a different lyric, as the song had been evolving during the summer of 1978.
Sung “for all the folks up around Boston” this version includes variations on Drive All Night and Sad Eyes
First Encore
Second Encore
Performance from the Madison Square Garden later released in an edited version on the No Nukes soundtrack. This version is better!
Third Encore
Bruce calls a shout out to each of the cities that are broadcasting the show live before finally, after nearly three hours and 25+ songs, Bruce and the band complete their performance to a thoroughly drained and exhausted crowd.
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What do you mean O’bama isn’t Irish?? Now you tell me…
Anyone have an idea? I’ve recently seen quite a few of them around the exterior of the house, flying and climbing on the siding, mostly when the sun is warm.
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