\('=' )/ \('o' )/ \('~' )/

Book of black earth / 3 inches of blood show

I don’t know what this first band’s name is, but I’m gonna pretend it’s Bleachd-blonde Neckercheif, because that’s the only two things about them that are at all memorable to me. I even like thrash, but I can’t see ever thinking this band is in any way exciting, even if I had heard them way back when I was 14 and couldn’t get enough of that kinda stuff. actually, who am I kidding, I would’ve loved them, but only because of the glam rock hair and neckerchiefs.

Happy New Year!

I just got back home from the new year’s fireworks show at the Space Needle. Apparently, they had a computer crash or something and all the fireworks just stopped about 20 seconds into it. They came back 2 or 3 minutes later but didn’t really follow the music or anything. There was no real climax to speak of, more of a gradual petering out until one last sparkler flickered away. Then the news people came on tv and said that when the computer went down, all the fireworks had to be set off by hand, and that there was one guy who had to do it all. At first I thought, “wow, how much does that suck? That guy must be mad as hell right now”. But then I thought about it a little more, and something occured to me. If it was just one guy, then the mirth of hundreds of thousands of Seattleites rested in his hands. If he didn’t step up, New Year’s would be ruined.

I’d like to think that there was a moment, not during the show, but probably right after, where he’s sitting at the controls, still reeling from the frantic white-knuckled smashing of buttons and switches, having had no clue whether he was averting a trainwreck, or just making it worse. And then, with the shock of it all waning, he realizes that he just did something that no one else could have done at that moment, and even though he didn’t want to do it, he did, and it felt amazing. For 5 minutes he was an unwilling composer improvising in front of thousands, with cameras rolling, sure to be talked about, blogged, posted to youtube. And somehow, he pulled it off. Of course it wasn’t perfect. It probably wasn’t even that good, but the people below were smiling, screaming happy new year to each other, hugging, kissing, some of them were even proposing to their girlfriends…

And no one was talking about how much the fireworks sucked. 

*yeah, I know, it most likely didn’t go down that way… and probably a lot of people were talking about how much the fireworks sucked. But I’d like to think that’s how this guy saw it.

Museum of Modern Betas

http://momb.socio-kybernetics.net/

Looking at Museum of Modern Betas, what’s really astounding to me is some of the names people come up with. Do any of these people actually think they’re names are memorable?

Mvolve

kwiry

myvidoop

enophi

findingdulcinea 

mployd

yokld

itsourtree (I looked at this one for a long time before I realized it didn’t say “it sour tree”)

xakasha (pronouce it, I dare ya)

spffy

xoole (bonus points for the over-the-top logo) 

These may all be great companies, I didn’t click through to many of them to check. There’s a chance some of them are targeted at a non-english market where their name actually means something. But barring that, I think the baby-talk, web-2.0 domain name thing is getting a little out of hand.

McDonald's v. The Cheesecake Factory

Just had an interesting conversation about software products and the point was brought up that quality isn’t necessarily a requirement for success. Rather, it’s sometimes a numbers game. Take McDonald’s, for example. They’re not winning any awards for great cuisiene or anything, but they’re making tons of money, because they realized that if they spend $X million on advertising, and spend $X million building X stores per square mile, then that will return $X million on profits. Relying on that equation makes them billions of dollars per year, regardless of how good, or good for you, they are as a restaurant.

Makes you wonder if there’s really value in the boutique. There’s no upscale restaurants that can compete with them in terms of profit, and the capitalistic argument that can be made is that the people actually prefer McDonald’s over something higher quality, but more expensive and less accessible. It makes some degree of sense. For such an everyday task as lunch, why spend time trying to optimize, when you can take the option that’s the most available?

It may make you money. But at the same time, who really wants to work at McDonalds?

Approximating xmas

I just called my mom so she could be on the phone when I opened the Amazon box she sent me. she didn’t get gift wrapping so I figured since I was going to see them anyways, I might as well try to relplicate the experience of her watching me open them as much as possible by getting her on the phone. They ended up being 3 books that I really wanted, (thanks mom!) It was fun, and we had a great chat for a while afterwords, but I wish we didn’t live 1000’s of miles apart. Distance and obligations have kept us from having good quality family time together for the past couple years. It’s sad. I really need to do something about that. Hey! that’s perfect new year’s resolution material!

Xmas tree-trimming cheer

This weekend was interesting. On saturday I went to Lake Stevens with Megan for her family’s tree-trimming party, and then came home last night to an xmas tree in our living room that I wasn’t really expecting, and had an impromptu tree-trimming party for that one as well. Both were a lot of fun, which puts this year in a pretty stark contrast to the last several xmas seasons. due to a combination of blinding workaholism, stumbling relationships, ill-timed relocations, and family obligations, christmas has been kinda blegh for pretty much most of this century. It’s a nice change and I’m looking forward to the rest of it.

Oh snoes!

of all the days for me to decide that I need to clear off this pile of stuff I’ve been procrastinating on, I pick the first snow day all year. Boooo my timing sucks. Its not really snow you can play in, though. it’s too warm.

woot!

I named 55 html elements in 5 minutes, damn I’m a nerd.

Uh oh

I just stepped on the scale for the first time in forever and I’m currently the heaviest that I’ve ever been. That’s not a good feeling at all. I’m hoping some of it has to do with the fact that I’ve been going to the gym more, so hopefully there’s some muscle in there weighing stuff down. Still, it’s weird, passing the threshold like that. Dammit, right before thanksgiving!