My Trip to MedicocreBuy

This past weekend was North Carolina's sales tax holiday - this means there is no sales tax on items the kids will need to go back to school.  To adults it means, "What else can I buy while there is no sales tax?"  To men specifically it means, "Maybe I should upgrade the computer".
I have been considering purchasing a netbook for some time now.  The reason is obvious, not having enough computers is what is hindering my writing.  I'm full of great ideas, but I only have two computers at home, one of which is a notebook, and I'm surrounded by computers at work, where I get a lunch hour well suited to writing blog articles.  A while back I looked at the history on my blog and really cringed at the number of "I'm not writing much lately" entries.  I swore I wouldn't do those anymore, so I haven't written much.  Not because I had no ideas, no talent, or am just plain lazy, but because I don't have a computer even smaller than my 15" notebook that I can carry everywhere - unlike that cumbersome BEAST that is my regular notebook.  My problem is the lack of a netbook.  This is sarcasm, get it?
Sunday afternoon, I was on my own.  My wife was shopping for the kids, who were visiting my parents.  So I headed for MediocreBuy (I made up the name to protect the innocent and avoid lawsuits).  They had a sign outside "Follow the blue line for tax free computers".  I didn't follow the blue line.  That's right, I can't be tamed.  Also, I know where the computers are in MediocreBuy and I knew that it was easier to just walk straight to the rear of the store - the line sort of meandered around the side.
So I walk to the back only to discover, they have blocked off the computer department.  I went back and followed the blue line, which ended at a rope... well not a rope, it was one of those things that is kind of like a seatbelt between two poles, but it serves the same purpose as the velvet ropes they used to use for this sort of  application. If only I had a Studio 54 joke to go here.
When I spoke to the person guarding the "rope", they explained I could not just go browse, I would have to wait about 20 minutes until they finished with the other people on the list.  I asked the rope attendant to please tell the manager that I would be taking my business elsewhere, I would not be waiting in line to browse.
Unfortunately, the story ends there.  I was really just browsing, and in the end decided I would investigate the possibilities that I had no ideas, no talent, or am just plain lazy.  But friends of mine left and bought a computer elsewhere... and maybe they think I did too.  I certainly showed them.

A Brush with Greatness

I had to take a business trip at the end of this past April.  Now I don't want to brag, but when my company sends me on business, I get to fly "coach".  This particular trip I was flying on Southwest, so  not only was I flying coach, I was flying general admission.  Essentially the same method of ordering people that has cased numerous concert goers to be trampled to death was being used to board my airplane.  I think this may have been my fault - I think perhaps I could have been assigned a seat if I had gotten a boarding pass ahead of time.
It was Monday afternoon, and I was in the extreme North part of Terminal A at RDU airport (actually I have no idea if it is North, but it is all the way at the end of a very long building that has been added on to a couple of times).  The scene here was about as upscale as WalMart very late at night.  Airports are such an odd grouping of people under stress there was no doubt in my mind that something interesting would happen that I would write about 5 months later.
The first noteworthy thing that happened was several flights, including mine, being delayed.  I don't remember exactly why - but it was either that a crew had worked too many hours and had to be replaced, or an airplane had to be repaired.  As I walked through the crowded terminal  I saw a man in his 30s explaining to some sort of employ from Southwest that this was why the airlines are in such trouble, that planes were late and people didn't want to fly, that they needed to hurry up and get back on schedule.  I'm not sure how to stress this, but the person who was saying this was rather upset, and seemed to have no idea that the fact people don't like to wait for their flights might already have dawned on the airline.  I want to state for the record, when you are finding the crew to fix my airplane, take your time and find the best rested people you can.  And when you are fixing my airplane, please take all the time you need.  I don't want you worrying that anybody on that plane might be in a rush when you're tightening a lugnut on the airplane I am about to fly on.
I didn't feel like explaining that to the gentleman who was making the small scene in the terminal, because I would have been within his reach and I wasn't sure how he handled disagreements.  So, I made my way to an empty seat, "excuseme'd" past a tall black man who looked to be in his 50s, and sat down.  I looked over at the man, who was nodding off, and thought "wow, that's him"..."nah", "but it must be", "nah".  After a few minutes of this, the man woke up and stood to stretch his legs.  I approached him and said "Hi, were you just at Charlie Goodnights?  He slowly answered "yeah, I was".  At that moment I realized I was in the presence of entertainment greatness.  I was sharing my fairly miserable, running late, general admission flight to Las Vegas with none other than Jimmy "JJ" Walker.  I took out my phone and asked if I could get a picture with him.  He very politely said "It would make things a little easier for me if I didn't have to" - which I took to mean "if anybody else recognizes me I'll have a terminal full of idiots screaming DIN-O-MITE at me".  He offered a handshake instead, which I thought was a nice way to handle the situation.
Above is what that picture might have looked like.  I cropped Ann Coulter out of this picture (which as far as I saw was not copyrighted).

On Seeing the Blue Angels Through a Grocery Store Window

The Blue Angels were appearing at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base a couple of weeks ago.  I didn't feel like going.  I'm not sure why.  My parents took Child 1.0.  I was happy he was getting to go, but a little upset with myself for not going.  I attended these regularly as a youth. I grew up on air force bases, and like all young boys growing up on air force bases I fully intended to be a fighter pilot.  Of course in reality, its very hard to get into the Air Force Academy, and that is more or less what is required.  So sooner or later, as John Mellencamp once stated, "those old crazy dreams just kinda came and went" .

So the fine Saturday afternoon my son was at the air show with my parents, I found myself in the grocery store picking up a couple of items for my brother-in-law's birthday dinner.  Its a newer store and has those windows that are eight feet off the ground so that you can't crash your car through them and steal tampons and cigarettes and other things its funny to picture people bothering to crash a car through a picture window to steal.  I looked through that window and the saw the Blue Angels fly by in formation.  It looked a lot like the picture here.  I found myself pointing at them, while nobody looked at what I was pointing at.  Although a few people just stared at me standing there pointing like an idiot.

At this moment, standing in Food Lion, pointing through the eight-foot-off-the-ground window like an idiot, I realized that every decision that led me to this point in my life had been wrong.  I don't want to do "this", I want to do "that".  And I don't think for a minute I ever for a minute wanted to join The Navy until that moment.

Naturally, I did the only sensible thing a 300 pound man looking down the barrel at 40 with a wife and two children can do when he realized he desperately wants to be a Navy fighter pilot.  I went home and watched Top Gun while I walked on the treadmill.  Seeing Top Gun in the theater when I was... 14 I think, was one of those kinda magical moments.  I've seen it several times through the years, but I hadn't watched the whole thing un-edited in a long time.  This particular watching it dawned on me, Top Gun sure has a lot of men that aren't dressed.  I'm not sure why this never occurred to me as a youth.  Maybe its because back then I wasn't ashamed to take my own shirt off.

Thanks to my buddy Chad for the picture.

A Paragraph of Unrelated Thoughts

It'd be interesting to know the ratio of blogs written to people who can't sleep.  Seems to me like it'd be high.  Then there are those people who kinda document they're entire lives from their phones etc, so I suppose a lot of people aren't blogging late at night... they're doing it at work.

The Carolina Hurricanes played tonight.  OW.  Not good.

Happy Mother's Day.

Go Canes!  Go Cubs

While Listening to Local Talk Radio...

About a month ago, I was driving East of “the triangle” area of North Carolina. I was listening to Allan Handelman on 101.1. FM . Allan is actually listed in Talkers magazine's top 100 talk radio personalities in the country, although they seem to have misspelled his name.  Somebody did, and I'm going to assume that his website is right. I used to like his show more than I do now, I think its because when he was on once a week on Sunday nights it was a little less time to fill and the guests and topics were better. Now he's on fifteen or twenty hours a week, and I find the topics and guests less interesting. In his defense, it is a lot of time to fill.

This particular Friday afternoon, he had Michael Molenda, the editor of Guitar Player magazine. As a guitar fanatic, I subscribed to Guitar Player for years, but I stopped reading it a few years ago. Still, I always enjoyed Mr. Molenda's editor notes. I had my family in the car. I suspect I'm not the only man who is occasionally both thankful for his family, and wants to be alone. Because as I was driving East I knew I would lose the radio station pretty soon, and my wife and kids would not stop talking so I could hear. I'm getting grouchier and grouchier and eventually I snap and start yelling for everybody to be quiet. It didn't seem like so much to ask. I do a lot of things for everybody else, I just wanted five to ten minutes of quiet. I didn't even need absolute silence, just enough that I could listen to the radio.

Finally, everybody is quiet. Its not because I yelled at them. Trust me,nobody cared. Maybe they were just all talked out. For whatever reason, there was enough quiet for me to hear the following conversation.  Its paraphrased, but roughly speaking, this was it:

Allan Handelman: “Hi caller, you're on the air with Michael Molenda, the editor of Guitar Player magazine”

Caller: “Hi Allan. Love your show. Its great”

I probably shouldn't have included this part. As we all know there are strict FCC guidelines that state that all calls to a talk radio show must start this way.

Allan Handelman: “Thanks. Do you have a question for Michael Molenda, the editor of Guitar Player magazine?”

Caller: “Yeah, I was thinking that the problem with music today is that bands just don't stick together like they used to. Like remember when that drummer from Def Leppard lost his arm in a car accident I think it was? Or was it both arms? But they stuck with him..”

Michael Molenda: “Yeah, I uh....”

Ok, lets go back and focus on the obvious problem:

Caller: “... remember when that drummer from Def Leppard lost his arm...? Or was it both arms? But they stuck with him”

(crickets chirp)

Yeah, words escape me too. I don't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure they escaped Michael Molenda too. It was the drummer with NO arms. This is what I raised my voice and told my family to be quiet for. Not to hear a good question for a guy with a lot of knowledge about guitars and guitar playing. Not to hear about the progression of Eddie Van Halen's playing through the 1980s. Not to hear about the advancements in digital modeling of classic amplifiers and effects. Not to hear about the return of guitar solos in rock music. I told everybody to be quiet so I could hear that the problem is that bands don't stick together. Like Def Leppard and their no armed drummer.

A Brief Word About Irony

I pride myself on my ability to spell.  I never won a spelling bee or anything, but I can spell, and worry about making typos because I don't want people to think I'm stupid.  BLOGGER'S SPELL CHECK BUTTON NO LONGER APPEARS DOES ANYBODY KNOW WHY?  Like most people I have a few words that are trouble spots.  "Barrel" was one for years, but I fixed this.  The waitresses at Cracker Barrel have it written on their aprons, and I ate there enough I learned.  Two r's, one l.

I have trouble with the word "misspell".  I can't figure out how many S's.  And I'm not going to look it up, because what's the fun in that (I mean in this particular case).  BLOGGER'S SPELL CHECK BUTTON NO LONGER APPEARS DOES ANYBODY KNOW WHY?

Behind The Music

I don't have time for the long rant I would like, but I used to enjoy VH-1's Behind the Music.  I don't even know when the last new one was made, and the only ones they re-run are Pantera and Ratt.  Wanna Save The Music?  Why not put some music back on television instead of bad reality television?

(also, I'm hooked on Celebrity Rehab/Sober House... and it is the epitome of bad reality television)

Drive-By Truckers: Brighter Than Creation's Dark

I've enjoyed Drive-By Truckers since around 2004, when a friend turned me on to their Southern Rock Opera album (which was already a couple of years old).


Brighter Than Creation's Dark isn't new, its about a year and a half old at this point.  I got it for Christmas but didn't immediately listen to it... I just wasn't in that mode.  Their Austin City Limits performance reminded me that I needed to pull it out and listen to it - but I didn't right away.  This is because I only have it on my iPod, and my headphones at work are plugged into the back of my computer and hard to get to, and THERE IS NO WAY TO COPY MUSIC FROM AND IPOD TO A COMPUTER THAT IT ISN'T SYNCHED TO THAT I AM AWARE OF.

One day this week I was upset on the way to work and felt that the best way to handle it was to shut my mouth, so that's what I did... and I listened to Brighter Than Creation's Dark on my iPod.  I haven't been able to stop listening to this album since.  I think its brilliant.

Here are some tracks from Brigher Than Creation's Dark.  These are live, and I think it is legal for me to put them up here like this.  I hope so, I'm trying to help not hurt.  If you enjoy these tracks, please support the band by picking up the album.


SeeqPod - Playable Search

The Cubs won their first spring training game today, which means absolutely nothing, but I hope they are good this year.

Please leave a comment if you liked this, or hated it, or you know how to get music from an iPod to a computer that it wasn't synched with, or what happened to Blogger's spell checker.

I Promised Myself I'd Write More...

I promised myself I'd write more, but I don't have anything specific in mind, so I don't know what will shape up here. Jim Norton made the point that reality television has sold everybody on the idea that their lives are interesting, when in fact that is not true for most of us.  I try not to be "that guy", and I'm not trying to be now.  But I figure better to write about the nothingness around me and maybe grow as a writer than to sulk about how I'm sure I'd be a great writer if only I had a subject.

The first spring training games are tomorrow.  I have mixed emotions about this because while I love the Cubs, the truth is that maybe the only thing more worthless than all-star games are pre-season games.  The Cubs let me feeling pretty beatenup at the end of last season.  They made some moves in the off season, the one that is bugging me is letting Kerry Wood go. He went to the Cleveland Indians, who I kind of think of as "The other Cubs", except that when the Indians make it to the post season they occasionally win games.  For the last two years the Cubs have had a strict policy of not winning in the post season.  I understand this makes it easier on the people who deal with the stats.

As I write this the Carolina Hurricanes are losing, badly, in the background.  The Canes have become only the second team to ever win a Stanely Cup and then miss the playoffs two years in a row.  To think people said hockey wouldn't work in North Carolina.  Based on the game I see here, we might be heading for a record (three years with no playoffs).

What do you know... I wanted to write about sports.  Odd, I know very little about sports.  I imagine it showed in my performance.

Leave me a comment if you like.  Blogger's spell checker is MIA, so if I misspelled anything I blame them.

Timezone woes and NASCAR

I'm a bit of a NASCAR fan.  I phrase it that way because it definitely seems to be waining a bit as time goes on. I used to watch more.  Over time I've started watching less.  There are a number of reasons for this.  The big one is that the drivers I grew up following in my 20s were older than me and retired (or died), and I don't like the new younger drivers that replaced them as much.

The thing bugging me right now is that as the sport has become more national, and international, they start races later and later to accomodate the West coast viewers.  Unfortunately yesterday's race was on the West coast and did not actually start until sometime after 6pm EST.  This is a pretty inconvenient time if you typically have a "No TV during dinner" policy.  Thankfully we also have a "Honey, its not TV, its sports" policy that is made to cover hockey and baseball, but can be exteneded to racing and football as well.

As I've blogged about before, California Speedway doesn't make for the most exciting racing.  There's "plenty of room to pass".  I imagine this is great if you're a race car driver, who doesn't want to have to bang into other cars in order to pass them.  Unfortunately, its a bit boring if you're a spectator who likes ars to have to bang into each other in order to pass them.

So the race started late, and was the primetime viewing for Fox for the evening.  Why would you pick what is bound to be a boring race to be one of the few shown in primetime?  I came up with a theory this morning: The Oscars were on ABC.

The Oscars an annual television program where we celebrate movies that most of us have never heard of for being the best movies of the year.  And more importantly the actors and directors tell us how we should feel about social and political issues.  They obviously deserve our respect because they pretend to be other people for a living, which is far more noble than the "jobs" most of us do at "work".  And as Opie and Anthony sometimes point out, anybody speaking into a microphone is an expert.  Obviously the folks at NASCAR were trying to put their boring race on at the same time as the Oscars to try to make the race seem more exciting by comparison.  Something called "Slumdog Millionaire" that I'm pretty sure I never heard of until people started talking about it winning Oscars won 743,987 awards.

As it turns out, the end of the race was pretty exciting, because there were times when Jeff Gordon got as close as half a mile to Matt Kenseth, who won the race.  Frankly it is more entertaining when you're on the highway trying to a get picture of a good bumper sticker with your phone, but at least you don't get paid millions of dollars for that.

Love it?  Hate it?  Leave me a comment.  Blogspot's spell checker is MIA, so if I misspelled a word just assume that I spell very well but made a typo and I am no longer able to identify typos if they don't have a squiggly red line under them.

"The Oscars" is some kind of trademark owned by somebody else... click the link they probably little r's and c's inside of circles that signify something.