Happy Easter (where applicable).

The kids are coming over today even though it’s Dad’s weekend. Jen’s mom and step father are coming over. My parents are coming too. It’s going to be a fun Easter for us.

The e-reader is what changed us from might want to want.

10 minutes very well spent…

A Facebook friend posted this. I tried to ignore it but I just couldn’t. Some violence and lots of bad language.

Last night I got a taste of how bad the flooding can screw things up. The traffic was horrible all over the place. There was a huge back up on 126 in Wayland as people who are apparently fed up with the posted detour around the closed section of route 20 decided to create a second option that backed up forever. Once I got past that I was pretty much clear road closure wise, although I did take the “B” route through Lincoln and Concord to avoid any hassles with route 117 being closed, but the volume everywhere was just out of control. Every intersection had a back up. It was nuts.

This morning I dropped off the kids in Salem at 7:40 and was at my desk by 8:30. Not only did we get Friday highway volume today (in other words, much lighter than normal) but we had Good Friday volume (much much much lighter than normal). I think the slowest I moved was 60 miles per hour (other than while on ramps and toll booths of course) and it was really nice.

Last night instead of going home after work I went to my parents’ house. The plan was for me to spend some time in their basement running the wet-vac. Because the traffic was so bad I got there much later than I expected, and then we had dinner, and then it was time to get the kids home… I think I filled the wet-vac three times in total. I didn’t help much, but fortunately they don’t have a lot of water left to remove.

While at my folks’ I let my guard down for a minute and fell for the oldest April Fools gag of all time. My step-son told me my shoe was untied and I looked. I was totally burned by a seven year old. I shoulda seen that one coming.

On the NHL front, I would like to thank(?) the Washington Capitals for beating the Atlanta Thrashers and thus keeping the Bruins in the playoffs. The Bruins lost last night 1-0 to Florida. That’s the 12th place, 8 points out of a playoff spot Florida Panthers. Boston now sits in 8th, which is about 3 spots higher than they actually deserve. They were shut out… by Florida. I’m almost to the point where I am hoping they don’t make the playoffs. If it ended today they would face Washington in the first round and they will be swept in the most utterly humiliating way possible. They simply are not good. They keep just barely winning enough to hold onto that 8th spot, but honestly… they are not good.

Fortunately for the down trodden Boston hockey fan, the Red Sox season opener is Sunday… against the Yankees.

Take me out to the ball game babie!

Today is April 1, 2010. April Fools Day. The day that nerds world (wide web) wide revel in the gags thrown out by tech sites everywhere. Here are a few of the pranks I’ve run across today.

Google is the King of All April Fools Day sites. The undisputed leader in all things prank…

and they kinda let me down today: Topeka
Here is the Google Topeka Blog page announcing their name change.

Kind of a let down. Not really up to their usual April Fools standard.

Fortunately a couple of other Google sites picked up the slack. Check out youtube’s new TEXTp Hi-Def video format.

Here’s an example:
Okay the example played in the wrong format and for some reason is showing up behind the template so I can’t see if I can change the output format or not. I’ll just post a link instead.

Gmail had some difficulty last night. It appears they had a vowel outage. It made their log in page really hard to read… and infinitely funnier.

Laptop computers are a wonder, aren’t they? Powerful computers that are small enough to carry around with you and use anywhere…

Or should I say, almost anywhere. There is one glaring hole in the laptop market and Toshiba is looking to fill it. Introducing the TubeTop. the world’s first inflatable laptop. It promises to keep you connected anywhere, including your hot tub.

This is my favorite, and I hope hope hope that it’s not a joke and it really is available for purchase. The iCade from ThinkGeek. You have an iPad but it’s not really cool enough as a gaming device. Plug it into your iCade and suddenly it’s 1982 and your favorite video arcade is sitting on your desktop. This is drool worthy in a serious way. Dig Dug, Donkey Kong, and Qbert! Don’t forget about Super Steve Brothers too. What a fantastic item. I want one. I want two!

Back to Google again. This is the best one. It’s not my favorite though because I am ridiculously jealous of it. I just watched some one at work download this app onto his Driod simply by holding it up to his computer screen. Why can’t my iPhone do that? Huh? You reading this Steve Jobs? How about a barcode scanner that can install apps just by looking at them?

The app itself is amazing. It’s a translator that translates animal noises into English. It’s an incredible breakthrough in human/pet interactions. Now you will always know what your dog is thinking (“Give me a cookie?”) in every imaginable circumstance (trust me, your dog is thinking “give me a cookie?” in every imaginable circumstance). Now you don’t have to wonder what your cat really means when it meows at you (“If I could open the cat food I wouldn’t need you and I would slit your throat while you sleep”) or purrs while rubbing against your leg (“world domination!”).

If I run across any more April Fools stuff I’ll add it onto this post.

Happy April Fools Day.

Okay, so this morning’s flood related traffic events were worse than yesterday’s. More closed roads, more scared drivers, more congestion, slower movement.

Hopefully the tide (pun intended) turns today.

All of the roads that were closed last time were closed today. Shawsheen Street in Tewksbury between route 38 and Foster Road, Cambridge Turnpike and Hawthorn Street in Concord, Route 117 in Lincoln where it meets route 126, Sherman’s Bridge Road in Wayland, Route 20 in Wayland where it meets Routes 126 and 27. I also saw two more closed roads in Tewksbury, Mohawk Drive and Old Shawsheen. The two roads were easily passable by canoe or sail boat, but no way in hell was a car getting through there.

Things were moving slow enough that I could grab some pictures. Just a three and two of them are repeats from the last flood.

Here is Shawsheen Street at Route 38 in Tewksbury. Jen drove past this a short time before I did and saw some nitwit in a compact car trying to drive through the flood. I didn’t see him stuck so he must have made it. He is still an idiot though. Don’t be stupid and try to drive through a flood. Your car will thank you.

Repeat picture #1, the intersection of 126 and 117 in Lincoln. I guess the issue here is the Sudbury River, but I don’t know where that is.

Repeat picture #2, Route 20 in Wayland at Old Connecticut Path, this time sans twit trying to drive around the barricade.

Yup, just added a few fields to the form. Jenny did the difficult stuff of course, I just put stuff on the screen and saved it. Nothing special.

Hey Jenny, what should we do next?

We’ve known this for a while now, but I think this is the first time we’ve gotten this much specific information out of a member of Rush.

Read this post from Rushisaband.com

The one aspect that seems to be waffling a little isn’t the pre-album tour, but whether or not there will be pre-album tour music released. Some of the talk from band members has seemed to indicate that they want to get a couple of songs down and release them, possibly as a downloadable single or something, then hit the road for a short tour, then go back into the studio and finish off a full album.

I am thinking that part of me would prefer to not have new music for sale before this summer’s tour. I think it would be cool to hear new songs on stage before hearing them on record. I have in the past suggested that maybe the coolest option would be to record an album’s worth of brand spankin’ new stuff live. I’ve always wanted to hear bands do that but I seem to be one of the only people on Earth who do. REM recorded big chunks of an album on stage, but I think it was during sound checks. King Crimson tried it once back in 1974 I think but ended up overdubbing quite a bit over most of the songs. I think Tanya Donnelly is the only artist I can think of who really did it.

Maybe Rush could follow her lead?

Rush tour this summer kids!

I took these last night while driving through a huge puddle that I guess technically qualified as a flooded road.

I’ll be hitting that spot again in just over half an hour. Looking forward to the challenge… to the adventure… to getting my post count up to 70 before the month of March ends.

Did I say that?

Just thinking out loud here. (you can skip this post, I’m just taking notes)

My drum machine is better than a toy, but not by much. If I keep a constant tempo and 4/4 time I can get it to do just about anything. If I need to change tempo mid song… well… I don’t think it can. If I need to use a different time signature then I have to set it every time I start a new pattern. That includes when I set it, make a mistake, and then erase the mistake. In that instance the formatting (ie the new time signature) is erased and reset to the 4/4 default. Pain in the buttocks, as Forest might want to say.

So I have never gotten very… proggie with it. Never used 7/8 time, never had big tempo changes. Dynamic changes are possible but they sound a little cheesy. Or should I say, cheesier.

So what is a guy to do when he listens to too many Yes records during his drives to and from work and starts wanting to write a 20+ minute epic?

Probably nothing. But maybe a suit of short songs ala side two of The Beatles Abby Road might be doable. It could actually be simple. Write a series of 1-2 minute “songs”. Label each one with a letter, A, B, or C. Program the drum machine for each separate piece. Record them each individually in the order you wish them to appear, for example ABACAB (for Genesis fans). Edit the “songs” together so that they play continuously. Wahlah, instant prog rock epic.

I feel retarded for not having done this before.

Duh.