Recently in Home Category

So I started feeling sick Thursday afternoon. Went home from work, started taking meds for the symptoms. Felt a little better on Friday but got worse on Saturday and a lot worse on Sunday. Went to the local Urgent Care Sunday night and it turns out that I have pneumonia. So I'm on better drugs now and I'm off work at least for today and tomorrow.

In the middle of all that, I got an email Saturday night from Jaqueline van Bierk of the band Otto's Daughter.

This probably needs a little background info before I go into the email though...

Starting in October sometime and running through 30 November, they were running a pre-order special for their upcoming album "A New Kind of Heroine". Pre-orders get a poster, get their CD signed, an early download of one of the tracks (The Truth...good stuff. You can stream it from their MySpace page), a listing on a thank you list when the album comes out, and a chance to win a Daisy Rock Dark Star guitar. I like signed stuff. I pre-ordered Becoming 001 and got it signed too, so it seemed natural to go for it again.

Back to the email...

The email was to let me know that they had the drawing and that I won the guitar! I never expected to win it. I don't even know how to play. But I'll learn to play it when it arrives...it really is a beautiful guitar and it would be a shame to have it just sit around and not get used. Who knows. Maybe this will be the making of a new rock star.

They had the drawing at their show on 15 December at The Gig (video is here, watch the whole set, the drawing's after the last song at about the 30 minute mark).

Last night they posted a three part set of videos of them packaging the guitar up and adding some extra stuff into the box while they're at it. I think I do need some staples, but it looks like they got taken back out of the box. Oh well. I hope the screw with a nut makes it through OK. G put in his sticks from the show which was a really nice gesture. Mo's guitar strap made it in there, but it doesn't look like he knew about it. Picks are always good. Too bad the chair and the stand didn't fit.

The Guitar packing part one
The Guitar packing part two
The Guitar packing part three

Many, many thanks to Otto's Daughter collectively for having the contest and then taking the time to turn it into a unique package of stuff. It's become quite a bright spot in a rather crappy couple of weeks. I'll take good care of it and maybe play some good music on it some day. And when they make it out this way, I'll be taking them up on Jim's offer to get it signed.

They want me to send them a picture of me with the guitar when it comes, so at some point I'll have an update post here with the pictures I took while opening it all up.

Technorati Tags: Health, Music

Just a couple pics that are posted here for use in a posting somewhere else. I'm trying to get to the point where everything that's on the server is linked from the blog somewhere.

Technorati Tags: Gadgets, Technology

Just a couple pics that are posted here for use in a posting somewhere else. I'm trying to get to the point where everything that's on the server is linked from the blog somewhere.

Technorati Tags: Gadgets, Technology

I do have time. Merry Christmas for real this time! The last picture was from a beach bar in Grand Case in St Martin. This next one was a house, also in Grand Case.

Technorati Tags: Holiday, Travel

I won't get to this later probably but Merry Christmas everyone!

Technorati Tags: Holiday

Obviously, it's been a long time since I've even looked at the website because otherwise I would have been shamed into adding something sooner.

I've thought about how to turn the site into something that is more useful to me in a way that will make me add more actual content to it. Haven't figured out how yet. Will keep trying.

At least the front page won't be blank for another month.

Technorati Tags: Technology

While it's still the 4th of July, I thought I should post my pics from this evening. We went to Washington, DC to see the fireworks on the Mall this year. We set up at the special event on the lawn of the Department of Interior South Building. Good stuff. My camera's not too good for taking fireworks pictures though.

Pictures over the fold...

Technorati Tags: 4th of July, Holiday, Independence Day

We spent the last week on Hilton Head Island to see my brother graduate from USMC boot camp at Parris Island. Figured why spend the time in lovely Beaufort, SC when we can spend our time (and $$) in a real resort area instead. It's less than an hour from Parris Island anyway. I'll have some more writing about it later.

I'm still trying to work out how I'm going to handle pictures...I'd expect that the relatives are going to want to see the photos I took and the easiest thing to do is point them to the website. The only problem is that it isn't that easy of a proposition to put the hosting together to support it. I am getting there though. iLife 05 shipped today so I should be able to work out some of the editing/touchups this week and at least have the images ready.

On 12 Jan 2005, WHFS cut over from its "alternative" format to some kind of Spanish dance music format. It's an end of an era...and other cliches I'm not going to try to use.

Margo and I met at WHFS' HFStival in 1996, so in a sense, the station's responsible for bringing us together. We stopped going in 1998, I think. The bands started to kinda suck and we got tired of drunk, rowdy 15 year olds.

WHFS is the #1 preset in both of our car stereos. Margo listened to them more than I did for the last few years. I caught the Sports Junkies when Howard got boring and when there wasn't anything else on. I've also become less tolerant of commercials in recent years and have retreated to talk radio. Over the summer, I got XM in the car and haven't spent any time listening to WHFS since.

So, it's kind of a bitersweet thing for me. Boradcast radio sucks and this is just another manifestation of suckage...taking a once-great station screwing it up for a few years, then taking it off the air. On the other hand, WHFS is indirectly responsible for a lot of the good things in my life.

On balance, I think I'm sad to see it go but don't think I'm angry enough to want to do something about it. Let them see what happens with El Zol. Maybe it'll work for them.

The first package arrived yesterday. It was my order for spices from The Spice House.

I got two types of cinamon (ceylon sticks and ground chinese), their fancy garlic salt and the curry lovers gift box (with three kinds of curry powder, a tandoori powder, whole nutmeg and more cinamon and bay leaves).

I had some warm cider with the Chinese cinamon and really enjoyed it. The cinamon tasted different than I'm used to. I sniffed around some of the others and they smell great. I'm looking forward to cooking with this stuff. If it works out I might have to start working on redoing the spice cabinet. I've been meaning to anyway...there's some old stuff floating around in there.

The next package should be home when I get there. Fun stuff!