Well, I did have one beer over the weekend. Actually, what no TV does is apparently make me get off my ass and finally do some projects I've been meaning to get to for a long time. This weekend I finally got my spare computer set up as an Otto Audio Jukebox. Otto is a web based audio jukebox system. You put your music someplace that Otto can see it, and Otto will play a constant stream of music, randomly selecting ten tracks at a time. At any time you can use Otto's web interface to override the randomly selected tracks by adding individual songs, random tracks from an album, or whole albums.

Basically, it's what I always wanted for a Gimpysoft Radio station. I could even open it up and let you listen to Gimpysoft Radio, but I have worries regarding Legal Action. Last time I had the radio station up I got a letter from BMG asking me what sort of licensing agreement I would like to sign up for. At the time I laughed it off, but now the music companies are actually suing people. I think I'll keep the music server behind my firewall for now.

But I had a good time Saturday and Sunday copying music onto the server. So far I have about 50 CDs and about five live shows on there. I think I'm going to have about enough hard drive space for the approximately 1500 CDs Bex and I have together, and if not I'll add another drive to the machine.

I'm honestly a bit too excited about this. It's about time I got all my music in one place. It's going to take several weeks of burning CDs before I get there, though.

Since I've finished up Show Crash, I've moved on to Thomas Frank's What's The Matter With Kansas?. I'm going into the book with low expectations, but figure that since Frank is apparently the go-to guy whenever Kansas goes wacky, I'd better at least read through the book.

And go wacky Kansas has, apparently. Between serial killers, fights over "Intelligent Design", and our fucknut Attorney General trying to get access to confidential medical records, Kansas has been making quite a bit of national news lately. It would be nice if the go-to guy for commentary on Kansas actually lived here, but since Frank has apparently been crowned King of Kansas, I suppose I ought to at least read his book.

Already I'm seeing some things in there that are a bit troubling. At the end of the book Frank lists people he interviewed. It seems that he didn't make it too far out of the KC Metro area for his interviews. Not having the book in front of me right now I can't give exact figures, but it seemed like most of the interviews are with folks from Johnson County. There was one from Olathe a bit south of me, one from Mission to the East, and even a few from my home town of Shawnee. If the premise of his book is that working class folks have been hoodwinked into voting Republican against their own interests, maybe he should have interviewed more people outside the most affluent county in the state.

But I'm only a chapter in, maybe he will spend more time on things outside Johnson County. Regardless, the book isn't too long, I assume I'll be able to grind through it pretty quickly. Maybe then I'll finally understand what the hell is wrong with me.

Yes, it did take me forever to get through Snow Crash. I had stopped reading it for a while because I didn't know where it was. When I was at home I couldn't find it, so I assumed it was in my car or at work where I'll read sometimes at lunch. When I finally decided to search my car for it, I couldn't find it. I assumed I must have just been reading in some weird part of the house and it was sitting on a table somewhere. Finally I was at the gym a few weeks ago and wandered into the TV room in the men's locker room. There was my book sitting on a table.

I forgot that a several weeks ago I had two racquetball games to play on a Sunday with two hours between games. I spent the two hours sitting around and reading, and must have left the book there when I went to play the second game.

Anyway, so I found it and finally finished it up. For what it's worth, I'll certainly add my recommendation. The book takes place in a future where the Libertarian Party has apparently won a few elections. Everything is privatized, from roads, to police, and even the federal government is only one of many competing state franchises (The Mafia appears to be their chief competitor.)

Also, how can you go wrong with a book where the main character's name is "Hiro Protagonist"? You can't. The book certainly lives up to its status as a classic. I'm just upset with myself for having waited so long to read it. Also, I now need to get caught up on the rest of my Neal Stephenson.

I've said this before, but I really think I've just about kicked this flu. I took a day off of work the second day after I started coming down with this. That was four weeks ago last Wednesday. As of yesterday I still had a productive cough and a pretty much constantly congested nasal region. I was still bad enough that we skipped our Saturday evening plans, since they were at what would most likely be a smoky bar.

Unfortunately, the pattern over the last several weeks seems to have been getting better over the weekend only to suffer a relapse starting on Tuesday. We'll see how this goes. I need to get better since I've got some classes coming up this week and some concerts next week. I certainly don't want to miss mc chris.

Hopefully things get more interesting around here as the weather warms up and I get over this horrible, horrible flu. I hope for your sake that this strain doesn't make it into your respiratory system.

Meme time: From Badda Blog!:

bold the states you've been to, underline the states you've lived in and italicize the state you're in now...

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.

Hey Ryan, remember to check back sometime later and find out how the search for the real A-Team went.

Also, how cool is it that you can now get The Greatest American Hero on DVD? Very cool, that's how cool.

Yay! A website warning of the dangers of Splenda is funded by the Sugar Association, a sugar trade group! Yay! Let's listen to everything they say! They're completely objective! Yay!

Lenexa Police Aren't Buying Naked Man's Story.

They never do.

I have terribly mixed feelings about Randy Moss being traded to the Raiders. There was so much good synergy to the Randy Moss/Vikings combo. It made it so much easier to hate them both. Apart, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to muster nearly the hate for either that I previously had for the combination.

On top of that, he's gone to an AFC team, so the Packers are almost never going to get to play him. That is rather unfortunate. We owe him payback that we aren't going to get for another three years, most likely. If I remember right, the NFC North will be playing the AFC West next in 2007. Unfortunately, that'll definitely be in the post-Favre era, and early in it at that.

There are some good points, though. This move is definitely going to help me get more into the local sports scene here. Since the Chiefs are also in the AFC West, I'll get to see the hometown boys play Randy Moss twice a year. The Raiders/Chiefs rivalry is always a big thing around here, and now I have a dog in the fight.

Also, lord only knows what Randy Moss moves Randy Moss is going to pull now that he's somewhere where he just has no reason to hold back any more. I can only assume that he at least made an attempt to do the right things out of respect for the Vikings and Mike Tice. Does he need to do that for the Raiders? Keep things on the level out of respect for the professionalism of the Raiders? In Oakland, he could really take his thing to a whole new level.

It could be fun to watch, I must admit.

Mainly for my own note taking, but regardless:

Tuesday, 3/1: Sauces 101
Monday, 3/7: Bridge for Absolute Beginners
Tuesday, 3/8: mc chris
Fri - Sat, 4/1-2: Big Smith, Fayetteville
Sunday, 4/10: Galactic w/ Buckethead
Wednesday, 4/20: Medeski Martin & Wood
6/17 - 6/19: Wakarusa

Well, Jeff Bridges has a pretty cool website.

I was born in Oregon and I remember my parents driving up to gas stations and saying "fill 'er up with unleaded." They always got full service. We left Oregon when I was in fourth grade, and come to think of it I don't remember getting a lot of full service after that. I thought that the reason for that was just timing, that self service gas just started becoming the standard in the early 80's. I just find out that Oregon, like New Jersey, has a ban on self-serve gas. Apparently my parents couldn't pump their own gas.

So did you kids who grew up in other states grow up with your parents pumping gas, or am I right in thinking that gas was mainly full-serve until the early 80's?

So I was over at Salon the other day and I stumbled into their music download section. They had a link to a few songs by Andrew Bird. Andrew Bird was formerly a member of the Squirrel Nut Zippers. You may remember the Squirrel Nut Zippers from that swing phase of the mid 90's. I certainly listened to several of those bands at the time, but the Squirrel Nut Zippers are the only one that I still like and will listen to occasionally.

So when I found out that Andrew Bird had been continuing to record music, I figured I'd give it a shot. I downloaded "Sovay" and "A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left" from Salon's link, and by that evening had decided that I needed to get Andrew's new album The Mysterious Production of Eggs. I stopped at a record store and couldn't find the new album, but did find his previous album Weather Systems.

Bex and I listened to Weather Systems on Secret Date Night. She compares Andrew Bird to Rufus Wainwright. I'm not familiar with Rufus, but I think that Andrew sounds like pre-Kid A Radiohead at times. It's good stuff. Bex was out with some friends on Saturday and grabbed me a copy of the new album. I've pretty much been listening to nothing else since.

I couldn't locate the Salon download link, but I did find this where you can download "Sovay" from the new album and "Lull" from Weather Systems. It's good stuff.

Andrew Bird is on Ani DiFranco's label Righteous Babe. That label has been scooping up quite a few acts that I like, including Drums and Tuba and That 1 Guy. Andrew is touring with Ani right now, and I hear he puts on a hell of a live show. They're going to be in Lawrence tomorrow, unfortunately $33 is a bit too much for me to be spending right now, particularly since I'd mainly be going for the opening act. I'll definitely need to watch for him coming back to town, hopefully soon.

So last friday was Secret Date Night. Bex had big plans for me, and I had been looking forward to it for the week. We first went out for some dinner at Blue Bird Bistro. We've eaten breakfast there many times, but had never been out there for a dinner. I thought about the Bison Burger, but opted instead for a butternut squash risotto. Bex had salmon served over an excellent stuffing of some sort.

After dinner it was over to the Kemper to see the Kansas City Outlaws, our UHL Hockey team. Bex had bought us tickets just behind the opposing team's bench. It was a good game, even though we lost 3-2. At the game, they announced that later this month you could meet a couple players from the St. Louis Blues. I guess it's not like they're doing anything else.

It was fun, relatively cheap, and Bex even had a good time. Between hockey, roller derby, and the upcoming start of baseball season, I just might make it through the football offseason alive.

Great date, Bex! I did my best to reciprocate by cooking a Korean dinner Sunday night. We had some Radish and Cucumber Kimchi, some Cabbage Kimchi Bex got from a client a while back, and a couple big bowls of Yuk Gae Jang. I changed the recipe a bit from the last time I made this, but it still needs some tweaking. I guess it's a bit sad when two tablespoons of ground chili isn't enough, but it could have used a bit more zip. Bex seemed to like it, though.

Still, I think I'm on the clock for the next Secret Date Night.

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Good night, buddy.

Ken Lanye says goodbye as well.

I was informed earlier this week that tonight is Secret Date Night. What are we doing? I don't know. It is a secret. I should find out at around 5:45. All I have been told is that dress is casual.

Saturday is Poker with the old Sprint folks. Other than that, a lazy weekend.

Hope you all have good ones.

I would also like to point out that since I installed the scode plugin, my server hasn't died. I've actually been up for a week straight now. It's almost like I'm a competent sysadmin.

Holy Crap! fad appears to have fallen into some sort of time warp. A whole day's worth of posts disappeared on Wednesday, and now Tuesday's posts seem to have disappeared as well. I expect posts will continue disappearing slowly from Farm Accident Digest. What is fad attempting to do here? Is he commenting on the inherently changeable nature of digital media, and how we must question the integrity of historical archives in the online world? Is this some sort of dada experiment in anti-blogging?

Regardless, by my calculations, fad will turn back into Rodya at The Genius I Was on May 24, 2006. Juan Gato will return November 7, 2006, but we will unfortunately lose this treasured internet resource on March 6, 2008.

Kudos, fad. You can always be counted on to provide the Next Big Thing in blogging. I expect a wave of anti-bloggers to begin following fad's example. This can only better the internet. If only somebody could convince me to get on board.

I've never been shy about letting my geek show, so I'll gladly point you all to the trailer for the movie adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The movie is out in April, and this is the first movie in a while I've been really looking forward to.

I didn't recognize most of the cast when I saw stories about this movie when it was in production. Now that I've seen the trailer, I see that Arthur Dent is played by Martin Freeman, Tim from The Office.

Does that mean I'll be able to get Bex to go to this one?

If you live in Kansas and you're not reading Red State Rabble, you're really missing out on something good. Pat Hayes is doing an excellent job covering the fight over evolution in Kansas schools. (Yes, we're doing that again.)

Pat has also been attending meetings on the subject (well, the ones he can attend), and providing some great first person accounts. Pat even covers chatter on message boards run by the Discovery Institute, a group promoting the teaching of Intelligent Design in Kansas schools.

Also, he can bring the snark when he needs to.

Well, I wasn't blown away by the initial artist announcement for this year's Wakarusa Music Festival in Lawrence, but they've since announced several additions and I am now officially excited. Bands I'm looking forward to from the lineup include:

Wilco
North Mississippi Allstars
Sound Tribe Sector 9
Particle
Galactic
The Gourds

I think that with Wilco and Neko Case on the bill I'll even be able to convince my hippie-despising girlfriend to come out, at least for a day, if not for the whole weekend.

Bonnaroo is still going strong, but this year there are actually more acts at Wakarusa that I'd like to see than there are at Bonnaroo.

Cool. It's good that they did well enough last year to bring it back again this year. It sure is a lot easier to drive to Lawrence than it is to drive to Manchester, Tennessee.

In general I don't have much sympathy for people who can't get "your" and "you're" right, but in this case I'll make an exception.

Well, we haven't had a new Terry Gilliam movie since 1998's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but it looks like the drought will end soon. The Brothers Grimm is done and will be released in November of this year, and Terry is already in postproduction on his next film, Tideland.

There isn't a release date on Tideland's official website yet, but I think I saw 2006 somewhere. Still, after a seven year drought, it'll be nice to have two Terry Gilliam films in the space of a year.

I've installed a plugin, so hopefully this will cut down on the amount of comment spam, and hopefully also keep the comment spammers from killing this server. I just installed the plugin last night, so if you get a chance, try to leave me a comment. Let me know if there are any problems.

cool ryan cna you post this fr me i lost my pssword n hav'ent gotten to post in a while like i wanted to this is wha'ts going on w/ me:

HI! THINGS HAVE BEEN GONIG PREtty good over here!! sorry i havent written since my trip to the BAHAMAS, but ive been pretTy busy. whatdoyouneedtoknow... I STAYED in the bhmas for a while, and caughtaboat to JAMAECA. That plac is FUN, the pepole are so HAPPY all the TIME. I met a really good GUy out there and we had some GOOD TaLKS. he had a hardjob,a nd poeple were hiting him all the time and making him sad and he got in trouble with his job when he took his trips to JAMAICAA. I TOLD him that if he didn't like his job he really shouldntbedoing it. hE told me THNAKS and that he did'nt think he wanted to do his old job no more, so he ws going to quit and do something morefunner. i hope hes doing good now, but i havnt seen him in a while.

I WS n jmaecia fr a WHILE, but now im bakc in US. i cnt say where, tho. I lost my wallet in JMAeCA, so i had to sneak back in to US. (Ryan, u should cancel the cmpany card since i do'nt know wheritis.

hope i cn writ again soon but theresnot so many free internets here in whrer I am. I thnk i got in trouble whn I sneaked in, Ryan can you find out if i'm in TROUBLE? k gotta go.

Oh, and I hope to have comments back up this evening. I'm sure you all have insightful things to say.

Since I no longer have comments available, I'll accept posts from the masses for a bit. Email me your post and I'll stick it on the front page. Now is your chance for Fortune and Glory! Don't miss this golden opportunity.

Reading this post over at fad's place, I was reminded of my favorite silly ID story.

When I lived in Houston, I never got a Texas Driver's License until I had been there for about four years. So there was a period of time when I was twenty-one, but only had my California Driver's License as proof of ID. There was a chain of liquor stores called Spec's that had a Texas ID only policy. I think they had signs posted, and some of the clerks would mention it if I ever got carded, but usually they let it slide.

I was involved with the parent organization of the student TV station and we found out about a non-alcoholic drink contest being held by the campus Greek Council. I guess they were trying to show that fraternities were about more than drinking. Anyway, I decided to represent the studio and enter the contest.

So I went to Spec's to get a variety of non-alcoholic mixers to mix into a wonderful non-alcoholic coctail. I filled up my shopping cart and went to the front to check out. At the counter, I was carded. I didn't have any alcohol in my order, but I played along, handing the clerk my California DL.

"I'm sorry sir, but we only accept in-state ID."

"Well, I'm not actually buying any liquor, so do you really need my ID?"

"Well, you actually have to be 21 just to be in the store, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Mind you, I was 21. Oh well. I ended up going to a nearby grocery store to get my mixers and ended up putting together a punch with various juices, and dropping a bit of dry ice into each cup I served. My drink won the contest, and I won a $30 gift certificate to Outback Steakhouse.

I spent the gift certificate on three pitchers of beer.

Did anybody else think that the commercial for The Pacifier was a setup for another commercial? The whole time I was watching that I was wondering what the ad was going to be for, and even afterwards thought it would end up being referenced in a later commercial or something.

Only now do I realize that that movie actually did get made.

So football season is over now... I think my sentiments are stated nicely over here. The Eagles put up a fight, but really what was up with their clock management in that game?

Bex and I finished up watching Freaks and Geeks on DVD over the weekend. That was a good show, and I certainly suggest you Netflix it.

Why did I not realize that obsessive love for Steve Martin was a very geeky thing until just the last year or so? I thought everybody loved Steve Martin.

Music hasn't been a big thing lately... We saw Big Smith for New Year's, but there before and since there really haven't been a lot of shows I've wanted to see. Tonight is Sound Tribe Sector 9 in Lawrence, and I've been looking forward to this one for a while. STS9 is one of those Jam Band/Electronica crossover bands that I'm fascinated with for some reason. I suppose I'd put the Disco Biscuits and Particle in that same category, but STS9 is more downtempo than either Particle or the Biscuits. Of the three, STS9 is probably my favorite.

I saw them at Wakarusa last year, and I think I may have seen them at Bonnaroo a couple years ago. Both times I came across them when I was kind of needing to get off my feet and relax, and it was terrific music to do just that to. I'm kind of curious to see what they'll be like given a show of their own. Bex listened to some of their stuff here and said that she liked it, even given her anti-jam-band biases. I'm looking forward to the show tonight, and as much as I hate to admit it, it'll be kind of cool to go to a show where smoking isn't allowed.

Harry is still working on the housebreaking thing, but that's going to take some time. We have him enrolled in obedience classes on Saturdays, and he seems to like playing with the other dogs.

Oh, and I've turned off comments again until I can figure out what to do about the comment spam killing the server. It might just come down to using a registration system like Typekey, closing comments on old posts, or using some sort of capcha. I'd like to go with the capcha, but I worry that a heavy comment spam attack would cause just as much server load with that system as it would with what I'm currently using.

Basically, I'm trying to come up with a way of dealing with the comment spam, but still allow Bista to comment. That may fall by the wayside, though. I'm tired of this server being down so damn much.

OK, hope everybody's having a good week so far. Buck up, it's only six months until the preseason.

Well, Bex floated the idea, and I pounced on it. My combined cable/internet bill was over $110. Do we really get that much value out of it? Probably not. So we've pared back. We cut out cable entirely and downgraded internet to a slightly slower package. In doing so, we've cut our bill from $110 to $32.

Pros and Cons of No Cable:

Pros:

1. Damn, we are so much better than you. You are wasting your life in front of the idiot box. I only turned in the cable box twenty minutes ago and already I've gotten more done than I have in the last month.

2. More time for video games. Without the obsessive need to clear out the hard drive on our PVR, I'll have way more time to play video games. Maybe I can finally finish Halo. Also, since football is about to be in the off season, I can start up a new NFL 2K5 franchise and at least pretend that there's football on TV.

3. $78 savings per month. What can we do with $78 a month? One very nice dinner for us, monthly Xbox game, jewelry for Bex, or maybe I'll just be a bit less broke from month to month.

4. Websites. Maybe I'll actually do some work on this site, on Kitchen Couch or just general work on the server and maybe keep these sites up at least half the time. (This is a pro for me; it may be a con for you. I leave this to your judgment.)

5. Better utilization of Netflix. We'll have a lot more time to work through the 153 movies in our Netflix queue.

6. Did I mention how much better we are than you?

Cons:

1. Arrested Development. When Bex floated this idea, we tried to come up with shows that we were really going to miss. Now that The Wire is done with its third season there really isn't another show that I'm currently obsessed with, other than Fox's Arrested Development.

2. Super Bowl. I could always go to a sports bar or over to Bex's folks place.

3. American Dad/new Family Guy. So Seth MacFarlane has a new show starting up this Sunday and new episodes of Family Guy will start in May. That's going to hurt a bit.

4. Football. Honestly, I prefer to watch football over at the Packers bar, so this won't be such a big deal.

5. No opportunity for an indignant letter to HBO. I was really hoping that HBO would have made a decision on a fourth season of The Wire by now. If they chose not to pick up a fourth season, I could have written an angry letter, included a copy of my cancellation receipt, and said that I cancelled cable because they cancelled The Wire. Since they haven't made a decision yet, I am denied that opportunity.

6. Reading Heather Havrilesky's TV Columns is going to be a lot less entertaining now.

Anyway, the turnover on TV shows going to DVD seems to be pretty quick these days. Plus, there's a lot of old TV on DVD that we can Netflix. I never watched Homicide: Life on the Streets, and now that I know it was David Simon's old project, I'm intrigued. If that turns out to be to my liking I've got eight years of that show to catch up on.

Well, thank you for your attention. I'll just be here basking in my own self-importance for a while.