"To bad being stupid isn't painful"

I drove by a car with that written on its license plate frame and I couldn't figure out if it was supposed to be ironic or not.

Were they being overly clever and in on the joke? Or simply stupid? The mind boggles.

Late nights, bored

The past few nights I’ve worked the late shift at, er, work. It’s kind of cool to do as it gives me all day to do what I want/need, but man, it sucks for the family life.

I got home last night at 10:45 and tonight around 9:45 and the kids are asleep and the wife is turning in. I suppose I’ll go to bed soon as well, but I’m not quite ready and, well, it’s boring without anyone to talk to. I can only check FB so many times. People, do something interesting!

Tomorrow I should be home after 8, so in time to see the kids a bit, as well as Marci. And then Thursday I think I’m off at 7. But next week it’s still the weird late hours. Not sure how it will be the following week.

They did say it was a 40hr/week job, which it has been, but it’d be nice to be able to have dinner at home/see the family a bit more than I have been as well.

And sorry for the weird formatting. For some reason, Windows Live Writer is doing something to something. I will try to figure it out.

I saw Fountains of Wayne the other night

Growing up, my favorite band by far was Rush. Then it was Boston. I was lucky enough to see both of those bands in concert (though with Boston, it was way late in their career). As I got older, college age, I developed more mature (yeah, right) tastes, branching off into, er, chick rock, mainly with Juliana Hatfield and Aimee Mann, both of whom I’ve also seen in concert.

After my college days, I just played in bands and didn’t listen to much new music. And then I really got into power pop bands as I am in power pop bands. Stuff like Weezer, Oasis, and, most recently Fountains of Wayne, none of which I had seen live.

Until Friday.

Fountains of Wayne released a new record earlier this year entitled Sky Full of Holes. I wrote about it here.

When I found out they were coming to town, I was pretty excited. My friend David was kind enough to spring for tickets, so all I had to do was wait.

Anyway, Friday rolled around and it was off to the Croc for the show. Curiously, it was an older crowd at the Croc. Not a lot of youngsters there. I’d say that the average age of the club-goers was probably 35 or so.

I got there a little early so I had to wait through the opening act of Mike Viola, who was an excellent guitarist and singer. Sort of like FoW light, as all his songs were catchy and told stories. All in all, a good fit for the night.

FoW finally took the stage and they started with Little Red Light from the excellent Welcome Interstate Managers record. It sorely missed the keyboard line present on the recording though as they only brought the four band members.

And I think that was why I felt pretty underwhelmed by the band for the night.

FoW is an ultra-slick and polished band in the studio. They are tight and everything sounds incredible. They have horns (listen to Mexican Wine for example), keys, more guitars, percussion, and chances to make everything sound right.

Live? Well, as much as I enjoyed the music, the live performance left me wanting more. It seemed that Jody Porter, on lead guitar, didn’t want to be in Seattle at all. He basically wanked his way through some solos and played just adequate guitar.

The other guys did well enough and I guess that was cool. Then they tried a little cover song medley in the middle of one of their older songs, including riffs from Burning for You (BOC), Carry On Wayward Son (Kansas), Do You Feel (Frampton), among others, and the wheels kind of fell off.
I don’t know. Maybe they had a bad night? I just felt a little unfulfilled. It certainly wasn’t like when I saw Muse for the first time, or Rush at the White River after their 5 year hiatus.

Ah well. I’ll still watch them on Leno this Wednesday and listen to their CDs religiously. And maybe I’ll catch them if they ever come back to Seattle.

My nightmares are to become reality

I realized recently that the holidays are just around the corner. I recently started working at a local mall.

What happens at the mall during the holidays?

CHRISTMAS MUSIC.

Aside from the long hours, tons of customers, Santa, kids everywhere and providing excellent customer service, I will be subject to at least 9 hours a day of at least some Christmas music.

I can’t imagine they’ll play Xmas music for all the music in the mall and/or Microsoft Store, but I know that there will definitely be some.

And to me, that some is simply too much.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m no Scrooge or anything, but my feeling is that Christmas music should be played at only one time: Christmas Day. None of this starting-mid-October stuff. Christmas and Christmas only is when those tunes should be played.

Well that only took all night…

Goodness. Yet another several hours fixing what should’ve taken just a little while.

After upgrading my computer to Windows 7 yesterday, it made Marci’s computer unable to print. With the previous setup, the printer was connected to my XP computer and she was able to print via the network.

For whatever reason, the printer was still seen on our network after the W7 upgrade, but it simply wouldn’t print.

I removed the printer several times, tried downloading drivers, researched the internet, and could find nothing indicating what might have been the matter. I brought her laptop downstairs and plugged it in directly to USB and it worked fine, so I know it wasn’t a compatibility issue. Plus it had just worked less than 24 hours before!

Anyway, I did some more reading and realized that Marci’s laptop was running W7 64-bit and my computer is running the 32-bit version. Someone mentioned downloading the WinXP 64-bit driver, which I did, and lo and behold, we have a winner!

Canon (the printer manufacturer) doesn’t have a W7 64-bit driver, but the XP one works fine anyway.

Problem solved.

Randomness on Saturday

I finally got Windows 7 on my computer. Good news is it is installed and running well. Bad news is I had to pull out a bad stick of RAM in order for it to work. So, though it works, it’s a mite slow.

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I’m drinking coffee now. I have some flavored creamer and I keep forgetting there’s already sweetner in it, yet I keep adding sugar. Extra sweet, I guess.

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I really need to clean my desk. Or, rather, junk-holding-apparatus. What a mess.

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Working Sunday through Thursday is taking me some time to get used to. True, I had yesterday off but being with the family just for today is sort of weird. Plus, when I would work on a Sunday, it was always a shorter shift. The mall, however, is a beast that never sleeps. I’ll do 8 hours tomorrow. Plus, I have to miss football, but it’s sort of fun to blast through it on DVR after the kids are asleep.

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Fountains of Wayne at the Croc next Friday! Can’t wait to see them.

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Have a good weekend!