Holy shit!  A giant blast of thunder just shook my house.  It sounded more like a car crash than thunder… and I live on a highway.  Lemme go look out the window…

Nope, no car accident.  Nothing out there but a little rain.

I still can’t think of anything to say.

22 months ago I ended a long and fruitful existance as a career college student.  I finished up with an unfinished degree in music, a certificate in audio recording, an associates degree in computer science, and then the big ol’ bachelors in computer science.  I spent something like 80 years in college and I’m still trying to figure out what I learned.  I’m also trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

I don’t miss school.  Well, I have to be honest I do miss being surrounded by college girls all day, but I don’t miss the classes and the work and the stress and the Physics and the cs lab servers crashing as I was trying to save my final projects (which happened once a semester during my last year, once in GUI I and then again in GUI II) and I sure as hell don’t miss frogger… damn that little frog bastard.

But lately I’ve been beginning to feel kind of nostalgic for my radio show.  WUML Lowell, 91.5 FM.  I helped put on a talk show for 2 years along with Deena and Joe and Monique and Veronica and Steve the Weather Guy and a whole cast of characters.  It was uber cheesy, but it was fun.  The last year my talk show became a schizophrenic blues show.  That means it was blues most weeks but occasionally it would be 2 hours of Mission of Burma, or some other Boston band that I was into that week.  I think one of the reasons I’m missing the show right now is that Mission of Burma is scheduled to release a new record, The Obliterati, on May 23rd and I’m not going to be able to wear out the station’s copy.  I’ve been meaning to pay a visit to SBS (the Jazz & Ideas show that used to follow me on Tuesday evenings at 6pm) but I haven’t gotten around to it.  I decided that this week I would definately do it… then I found out it was spring break.  Damn it.

My mind is totally empty right now.  Nothing but vapid nothingness spewing outa the gigantic melon on top of my shoulders.

So what the hell is it with me and hockey this year?  I’ve followed three teams.  In the NHL there is the Boston Bruins who aren’t going to make the play-offs and have turned themselves into a pathetic mockery this year.  In the AHL there is the Lowell Lock Monsters who are going to miss the play-offs this year and who will either be sold and move out of town or fold after the season, and in the Olympics there was Team USA who made the medal round despite only winning one game in the round robin and were eliminated in the first game and who couldn’t even manage to beat Latvia.

I still haven’t the slightest idea of what to do with myself.  I’d like to develop some creative idea in this little post but I just can’t get my head outa my ass.

Ok, enough already.  It’s past my bedtime.

That is the face of a man who is going to be somebody’s Daddy!

Mike & Tammy G. of Wisconsin are expecting.  Well, Tammy is expecting  Mike is just sitting on his ass waiting for the chance to meet this brand new person.

Massively Huge Congrats

Justin is sick.  Very sick.  Justin has an inoperable tumor in his brain stem.

You can learn more about the situation at http://www.justinfund.com/

Jeff has insurance to cover conventional treatments.  However, the success rate for conventional treatments for this form of cancer is very small.  So the family is going to end up paying for some different types of non-traditional therpy.

If you live in Eastern Massachusetts or Southern New Hampshire there is probably a fundraiser being set up near you.  Check  http://www.justinfund.com/ There is also a paypal account so you can make a donation without leaving your desk.  As you might have guessed, you can access the account at http://www.justinfund.com/

My friend and his family need help, and if you should be browsing around and come across this post and have a couple of bucks lying around maybe you’d be kind enough to help them out.

Thanks

I also remember my second thought…  I MUST HAVE ONE!

So when the ‘TECH hired me in July of ’04 one of the first things I bought was a cheap camera phone.  Cheap being the operative word.  A few weeks later my sister bought one too only her’s had a flash… mine doesn’t.  A few months later my brother bought one too only his had a flash and a lens cover.  Nope, not mine.

My camera phone takes very low res pictures that are blurry and the colors are all screwy… but I have a camera phone.  Damn straight!

Today the camera phone was used twice.When I leave work I take that magic highway that is known as US Route 93 South and MA Route 128 North… at the same time.  Go figure, ya drive North and South at the same time.  Like magic.

Anyway, I’d gone about a mile and a half when I saw smoke rising from the road ahead of me.  Turns out there was a car on the opposite side of the road that was totally engulfed in flames.

Out came the camera phone:

Can you see it there?  The car on fire in the distance?  Just in case, I took a second shot and it was much better… or at least as much better as this piece of crap camera can swing.

Cool huh?  Cool that is, unless it’s your car.  In which case… sorry about that.

Now for the second camera phone opportunity.

I have season tickets for the Lowell Lock Monsters of the American Hockey League.  It’s 40 nights a year that I have something to do, which for me is pretty impressive.  Things are not going well for the Monsters this year.  The team has little to no chance of making the playoffs, the NHL affiliate is going to pull out (hey Carolina, don’t let the door hit your ass on the wait out), and the owner has annouced that he’s selling the team.  Chances are if the team gets sold it will move to another city.  If the team isn’t sold by April 18th (I think, could be wrong) the owner says he’s going to fold.  In other words… there is a huge chance that Robbie’s gonna have 40 nights free next winter.

Tonight Lowell played against the Hersey Bears.  What’s the significance of that?  Well, the Bears have a forward by the name of Chris Bourque.  Chris’ father is some dude named Ray.  Ray Bourque, as in the former Boston Bruin and NHL Hall of Famer who, with the notable exception of Bobby Orr, is probably the greatest defenseman in the history of Hockey.

Ray was at tonight’s game too.  He sat in Box X.  Out came the camera phone!  check out this picture

That arrow is pointing to where Ray Bourque was standing.  Can you dig it?

My sister also whipped out her camera phone and took a similarly horrible waste of computer/camera phone memory.  However… something strange happened when she saved her shot into her camera’s gallery.  Her camera saves pictures with a file name that is based on the number of pictures the camera has taken in its lifetime.  Her Ray Bourque picture was file number 77.

Did ya see that coming Bruins fans?  The file was #77 just like Ray!  Ray Bourque wore uniform #77!  Talk about wild cosmic coincedences!

Ok, so it’s lame and neither of us has much of a life… and to make matters worse Lowell lost the game 3-1.

So, the camera portion of the camera phone is shit… the phone itself is a good one at least.  That’s probably what prompted me to go out and buy a 5 megapixel – 10X zoom Kodak camera a few months ago.  hehe now that sucker woulda shot the whites of Ray’s eyes from the opposite side of the rink.

Kick (gadget geek) ass!

Dig those crazy Green Monster seats.

The Boston Red Sox have three classes of tickets that are in such high demand they don’t sell them to the general public.  They hold lotteries through their website where the winners get the chance to purchase them.

The three classes of tickets are
1. Green Monster seats
2. The right field roof seats
3. Any and all games against the Yankees.

I entered all three drawings… and didn’t win.  Of course.

However, the team holds what they call “second chance” lotteries to sell off the few tickets that aren’t sold after the first contests.

Can you guess who’s name came out of the hat this time?
I bet you can.

MINE!

I won the chance to buy a maximum of two tickets to one game.  Yeah, capitalism pretty much rocks.  I checked about 10 different games and in each case they didn’t have any two actual Monster “seats” together so the best option was standing room.  I bought two standing room tickets to a Toronto game in September.

If you want to go with me you can start thinking up a good bribe now.  I figure that Geddy Lee is a Toronto Blue Jays nut… maybe Dirk would swap me a few late 70s or early 80s soundboard tapes for a chance to see his Jays from the top of the Monster.  It could happen… it won’t, but it could.

In lew of that unlikely event, the rest of you have a chance to go with me if you can just come up with an acceptable bribe.  Use your imaginations, be creative.

Damn I might actually end up being popular for a couple of minutes!
WOOHOO

Today my car reminded me just how freakin’ long my commute is.  I bought it in April and it had 78,000 miles on it.  Today, less than 11 months later it flipped over 100,000 miles.

Yee-fricken’-haw!

Lets do the math:

22,000 miles/11 months = 2,000 miles/month.
Figure about 4.5 weeks per month gives us roughly 444.4 miles per week.
With 7 days in the average week that ends up as an average of 63.5 miles
per day… and that of course includes weekends.

The actual commute comes out to about 85 miles a day, round trip.

You don’t see the other subtle reminder of my commute… I was just about out of gas.

Fortunately(?) for me I was stuck in a very long traffic jam on 128 north tonight, between route 20 and route 3, when I hit 100,000 miles so I had plenty of time to snap pictures.  When you’re moving at about 5 miles an hour for an extended period of time you can get a lot done in between changes in the odometer reading.  This particular shot came during the rare chance to drive faster than I could walk.  I was flying.

On a totally unrelated note…

A number of years ago I went to see a band called Chelsea on Fire at the Linwood in Boston.  I seem to remember the show was a going away party for some one who was moving out of state.  The guy raffled off his car.  One of the other acts that night was Emily Grogan.  I was really impressed.  Not long after I found a copy of her record FalseOmeter.  Again, I was seriously impressed.

Then for years I heard nothing.  It was probably my fault as I was at a point when I was losing touch with Boston music.  I was just getting busy with other things.

Then along comes this silly little myspace.  I was looking at bands from Boston and I saw an Emily Grogan profile mentioning a new record called iO.  I bought it last night.  I’m trying to come up with a way to say, “WOW!” that accurately expresses how much I dig this disc.

There are two issues.  One is personal and not important in the grand scheme of things, the other couldn’t be more important and is completely beyond my ability to control or even infulence, but I feel I owe it to the folks involved to do something, even if that something amounts to nothing.

I have a friend who is the father of a very sick little boy.  I got all of my information third hand, but from what I’ve heard the illness is terminal, and his time left is measured in days.  I want to let my friend and his wife know that I’m thinking of them and that if there’s anything I can do for them I’ll do it, but I am completely terrified to call them.  Every day I pick up the phone, panic, and put the phone back down.  I feel useless and horrified at the same time and I don’t like it at all… but I haven’t been able to wind myself up enough to do something about it.  These people are important and, even though I can’t change anything that’s happening, I feel like I’m letting them down.

The other issue is just plain trivial in comparison, but it does underscore my ability to procrastinate to the point of failure.  I’ve been asked to audition for a band.  I haven’t played in a band since February 15, 2005 when Break Even broke up.  Actually, three of us got together for an afternoon back in December and jammed around (poorly) for a couple of hours, just for fun… but otherwise, nothing.  I love to play, but the older I get the harder it is to gear myself up for it.  I don’t force myself to practice anymore so when I go a month or so without anything to focus on I just lapse.  I’d like to at least try out for this band.  They’re really different than anything I’ve ever been involved in before and I like the idea of the challenge… but once I let them know that I was interested I just left them hanging.  It’s been weeks now and I just can’t bring myself to write/call them and set up a meeting.  Why?  It’s not that I’m a bad guitar player… I am a bad guitar player but I’ve never let that stop me before.  Why?  What is it about me that causes me to act like this?  Is there some part of my make-up that causes me to crave being in a rut?

I have no idea, but hopefully I’ll figure it out… but not tonight.

Well, they messed with one of the files I gave them and posted it on their myspace page.  I feel like a proud papa.

My suggestion to all would be to go to their site and download the four songs.  I purchased their record from cdbaby.com, but the band’s page there says the CD is almost out of print.  If you can’t buy it then download what you can and hope it holds you over until the next record comes out.