I’m at that strange cross-roads of sleep deprivation, coder-focus, caffeine low, and musical bliss.
I know it is a passing moment. And when it passes I really should go back to bed, but here I am.
I’m working on another web site, teaching myself MVC3, EF 4.1, and Razor. Obviously, it’s very late. I really should be asleep. This is why I can’t take a nap at 8pm. I wake up at midnight and there goes my sleep schedule.
Into the Fire is playing. When I close my eyes, the chorus makes my mind float.
A hypnotic lilt.
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Last weekend, the woman and I traveled to Las Vegas to see Rammstein. We had a bit better seats for the second show. I could definitely feel the heat from the pyro this time. It was a really intense show. I had a great time.
A review from the Las Vegas Journal.
Below are (hopefully) pics from the Las Vegas Sun website.
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Well… I managed to survive another year. Time for some new CDs!
Something old. Something new. Something for the woman. Something on a lark. Lots of new video footage.
Accept: Blood of Nations
Breaking Benjamin: Dear Agony
Disturbed: Asylum (CD/DVD)
Godsmack: The Oracle (CD/DVD)
Ra: From One
Seether: Disclaimer II (CD/DVD)
Seether: Karma and Effect
Stone Sour: Audio Secrecy
I haven’t had time to listen to everything yet. I also bought Iron Man 2 and Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage on Blu-Ray. Plus, Rush: Contents Under Pressure. CDs, Movies, and another book. Gotta love Amazon Prime…
My wife bought me a Nook. I decided I wanted a Nook after looking at my mom’s Kindle DX and checking out the Sony and B&N readers. I like the touch screen on the nook. Plus, I found B&N’s e-books tend to be the same price or cheaper than the Kindle. And I don’t like the restrictions that Amazon forces down your throat. Forcibly pulling titles off of Kindles is not cool. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.
Once I got the nook charged up, connected to my home network, and registered I immediately downloaded the Nook formats for my O’Reilly e-books. The last Steig Larson book was the first full-length novel. I’m almost finished with the latest William Gibson and I’ve got something Chinese queued up next. The memoir of the Premiers or something like that. I’ll give you a real title once I start reading it.
Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something really wrong about this image. Why is Glenn Danzig surrounded by lilies?
I found a simple fix for my problems with Media Player in Win7. Download the CODECs. Duh. Here’s where I downloaded a working CODEC. The files originally came from Shark007. Emigrate now fills my home office.
Picture if you will… A slightly sleepy programmer, typing away at his keyboard with Kingdom Come’s Get It On playing through the headphones.
Yes. I am a child of the 80s.
I have noticed some issues with Windows 7.
- Media Player doesn’t work. Period. It never loads. It always crashes with a “Server execution failure.” I don’t know why and I haven’t had the time to reserach the issue. I’ve tried files on my local hard drive and files on my Home Server. It doesn’t matter.
&bsp;
- Windows Explorer isn’t refreshing. I worked on an invoice for a client last night. I copied an old invoice and renamed it. The result of the rename didn’t display. In other words, the window content stayed the same as before I renamed the file. I double clicked on the file and got a “File does not exist error.” I manually refreshed the page and there was my renamed file. Rather odd I should think.”
&bsp;
- Warhammer has no sound. I’m still getting sound from the desktop, but not from within the game. I really don’t like that. I prefer to hear when someone is taking a swing at me.
&bsp;
I wonder what other issues will appear.
So am I an early adopter if I switched to the new O/S before it’s general release? I waiting until the RTM dropped and I HAD to do something about the systems at the office. I never considered Vista a viable desktop. I realize I’m beating a dead horse. Whatever.
Obviously, I’m not sleeping again. This always comes in spells. Today was a busy day. I worked on the mower, setup/assembled a fan and water cooler at the office, cleaned the gutters, hung some art, patched a bare spot in the yard, sprayed all of the weeds, blah, blah, blah… I should be tired. I didn’t nap today but I did consume 5 glasses of Pepsi. That’s probably why I’m still awake. Read more…
I’ve been listening to a LOT of music on Pandora lately. Amusingly, most of it I already own. Anyway. Me being me, I wanted to learn more about the technology behind the selection algorithm. So I hit Wikipedia and ended up on Scientific Computing with this article. After reading the article, I can’t say that I learned much. I’m hoping to find out more about the way the algorithm selects tunes. I’ve got ideas on what it is doing, but I’d like to learn more.
Switter by Rammstein played last. Yeah, I have that one. It is really funny if you knew the translation. Who said those ‘wasted years’ in German class wouldn’t pay off. I learned how to use Babelfish better at the very least. LOL It helps when you know the language structure (noun/verb order). Gott Sein by Megaherz is up now. My German isn’t good enough to follow along but I can get the general idea and fill in the gaps by using references. After to listening to several Megaherz tracks, I think they will have to be added to my collection. Interesting. Similar to Rammstein, but not. Good stuff.
I am sure Marilyn Manson is lurking nearby.
Umm. Yea. It’s spring. What did you expect?
New Music
| Paramore: |
The Final Riot! |
| Pearl Jam: |
Ten [Reissue] |
| Queensryche: |
American Soldier |
Queensryche are playing at the Roseland this weekend. Hopefully the tickets we ordered and received will automagically reappear before 21:00 on Saturday evening. Hopefully…
I’m researching MVC Design patterns at work. I’ve got working code buried in a Excel Ribbon. I need to migrate that code out of the Ribbon in to a new WinForm. It sounds like a simple cut-n-paste. Maybe.
Read more…
UltraGridGroup group1 = band.Groups.Add();
During a code review this morning, I had one of those crazy moments. I was looking through this rather large block of code written by our team lead, Rob. I was doing the review because I wrote the formatting engine for the Excel UI that we currently use. The team lead is working to port all of that functionality over to a WinForms desktop app. Lee, who sits on the other side of Rob from me, was half-listening working on his own stuff.
So… I’m following along as Rob discusses all of his changes and I see the line I wrote above. On pure impulse, I casually belt out, “Band on the run…” Slightly out of key and with zero context… and everyone in the room starts laughing. A lot. Lee initially grimaced because I had scored a direct hit with the “Can’t get that tune out of my head” assault then he started laughing. Rob was trying to keep a straight face while he continued his monologue. It probably didn’t help that I was humming the melody. Every time Rob would try to even things out Lee and I would look at each other and start cracking up again. This lasted a good 10 minutes.
Shiny Toy Guns is play on Pandora at the moment. It was Dokken and Fleetwood Mac a while ago with some W.A.S.P. throw in. Now if I could just find some Paul McCartney and Wings.
The first track played on Pandora this morning.
| Track |
Electric Head (Part: 2) (Remix) |
| Artist |
White Zombie |
| Album |
Supersexy Swing’ Sounds |
| Station |
Goth, Teutonic, & Thrash |
The creative juices have been primed and ideas are flowing through my fingers. It’s time to pivot some data.
I think today is going to be interesting…
Occasionally my German comes back… Usually at strange times and without context.
I didn’t sleep well. Too sore. I swam yesterday. I should get back to lifting weights. But neither of those are the root cause of my muscle aches. Friday night I slept wrong and woke up with a kinked neck which never really went away. Satuday was Crue Fest. 
After a couple hours of headbanging to my whole body was tweaked.
Maybe I’m getting too old to scream the chorus to various Crue tracks? Maybe. Buckcherry sucked. I skipped most of Papa Roach. The guy reminds me of a lame Green Day clone, which is course is yet another clone of the music I listened to in High School. Sixx AM was realy good, as was Trapt. I had a really good time. So, swimming was an effort to unwind the tension. It worked but only for a while.
Today is the first day without a contract. I slept in. I messed with the ceiling fan I have been trying to install. I need more parts. The ceiling angle is too steep. I talked to an auto parts store about picking up new seals for the slave cylinder on her Duc. It leaks. It has always leaked. $190 and it leaks because they shipped aluminum washers instead of copper washers. I am under-welmed to say the least.
I’ve got two more interivews scheduled for tomorrow and at least 3 more possibilities. This doesn’t include things that are already in-process. Something will turn up. It always does. I am still craving some moto-time, but I need to get my next gig lined up. That’s my priority at the moment.
Guten Tag
I’m at that strange cross-roads of sleep deprivation, coder-focus, caffeine low, and musical bliss. 
