Musical Archaeology - Rhapsody Playlists ('n' More)

This site is managed with GVIM, Filezilla and PHP, yeah I code my own stuff..

Due to the nature of this blog, archives have to be provided in seperate locations, to get back to the most recent blog, simply click on the default link. The site will always link to the most recent one.

Blog Archives: [Current, 2007], [2006], [2005].

For You Lazy YouTubers: YouTubeify It Bookmarklet + FREEDB = Easy YouTube music searches.
For Those Who Haven't Patience To Use YouTube: CHANN3L Z - What If YouTube was TV. (NEW!!!, 2/07) Quicktime (30MB), YouTube One and Two, Tutes.
Cheapest way to podify yourself: Buy this mp3 player (I own two of these with 1 gig SD cards ) (--> DEMOSTRATION VIDEO)
Cheapest way to listen to audio:Dell A215, Get Some Clip On Headphones, Sound Blaster Live!
Best way to veggitate:

www.chann3lz.com Youtube + Me = Chann3lz, a completely random music video playing jukebox of content, managed by the audience, no registration necessary, all mechanism, no policy.. www.youtube.com Videos, Videos, Videos and more Videos, and you don't have to download anything, you don't even really need a Video Codec. It's all FLASH!! Tubeify Everyhit Take YouTube, Combine with Everyhit.com, What Do you get? iTunes How-to-install iTunes (v) here is a downloadable tutorial (v) if you have a slow line. RSS NETCASTS (Hint: Drag&Drop These Links onto iTunes "Podcasts"): Wikipedia Synthesized Mind "Fart" Synthesized (Monthly) Musical Archeology Synthesized Wikipedia Turkeys Synthesized If you want your own netcast (netcast = podcast, Apple is trademarking podcast), but are not sure how to set one up, get my drop-it-in netcast generator script. Script is provided as-is, use at your own risk, thus I'm not liable if somehow you don't get it to work or it eats your cattle and causes you to lose a bunch of money. My tutorials require Real Video not because I'm a Real-Rhapsody fan, but because RealVideo happens to be the best format for low-bandwidth tutorials

Rhapsify Everyhit.com looks for albums of a date range precise to a month, providing links to rhapsody-online (and YouTube).
YouTubeify Everyhit.com is much better for tracking down music videos to precise songs on "YouTube.com".

BEST WAY TO PERUSE YOUTUBIFIED LINKS
1. go to url "about:config" in address bar of firefox browser.
2. toggle 'browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs' to true (pre 1.5; post v1.5, search Advanced Options )
3. then middle mouse click on each youtubified search link
4. click on the videos, bookmark, make into playlists, enjoy..

How Fast Is Your, Connection, Really!! a script I wrote that computes data connection uproute/downroute rates (here is mine, Comcast).

Where to Find Quicktime Pro Forums (and many disgruntled owners): Quicktime for Windows Forum.

Best way to secure your computer: Grisoft AVG (free), ZoneAlarm (free*!) {flash demo}, TCPView (free) {for semi-advanced users}.
Best way to discover music besides this one: Coverville.com
Best way to access your computer remotely: VNC, in particular TightVNC (stay away from www.gotomypc.com)
Best way to obtain/distribute huge files (bit-torrent clients): Azureus
Best way to make backups: Knoppix (Linux/DVD*R), Audiograbber (CD2mp3), DVD Shrink (FreeDVDBackup)
Free Knowledge: UC Berkeley Courses (no credit)

Interesting netcasts for programmers: Software Engineering Radio
How to painlessly publish/purchase a book: LULU.COM
Best of the Best (non-obnoxious): 46 freeware utils
Best webhosting: Geocities (free, commercially scaleable), phpwebhosting (commercial with ssh/sftp-access), Find Hosting.
Best information resources: Google (no brainer), Wikipedia (def)
Best place to lust for synthesizers: Vintage Synth Explorer
Best way to convert wikipedia articles to sound TextAloud, the Eddie voice, and my custom UserTranslations.chl file (put in install directory). TA also comes with a firefox/IE plugin that will read web pages for you, making it easier.. I use it when I hate reading web pages..

Alternative Content Discovery: Blogdigger, WebJay
Trouble Viewing Videos? You need some Codecs: Matroska Pack (good), free-codecs (works, but it may have a Trojan)
Need to convert Media format X to media format Y? Use Mediacoder its a freeware media swiss army knife, that is supposedly open source (its on sourceforge, huh?).
Need to convert video formats that Mediacoder doesn't? Use AVS Convert , I own a copy myself, and it lets me do stuff with Quicktimes and WMV's that neither Microsoft nor Apple will permit me (note the site looks kinda cheap, but the program isn't.
My most favorite rhapsody playlist: Smooth And Punchy Playlist
My most favorite bands (and most played): Level 42 (r), Nik Kershaw, Cock Robin, Double (not played, on my wishlist), etc.
My most favorite years (musically):1978 (r), pretty much any year from 1976 to 1989
My most favorite movie (note: works, and could be made on a low budget):Brainstorm
Most Favorite Music Video (5/12/07):Brinsley Schwarz - Surrender to The Rhythm..

Why is this page so huge: Google can cache it all, audience is broadband users, I use less than 50% of my quota per month.
Your most favorite rhapsody playlist: The Brian Eno Playlist
Big application wish: SOUNDBLASTER LIVE! PRESET EXPORT, so I can share with you some of my killer rooms.

Cool way other than Chann3lz for listening to audio.

Say No To Software Patents
Thanks to: JESUS (CHRIST) *, Richard Stallman (AVI, RM, RM2-SP), and the respective creators of these packages and places.

Bag 'O' Tricks Directory lists tips/tricks and reminders and other stuff I would love to clog my header with.

* - Wikipedia is edited by anarchy, don't use for christian inspiration. Christian Bahai is a oxymoron BTW.
*! - I use Zonealarm Pro, which is what that flash demo is demonstrating, ZoneAlarm costs about fifty dollars a
year with updates, but is well worth it, it also comes with spyware weeding software, so there is no need for an application like "Ad-Aware",
"Spybot Search & Destroy" or "Spyware Doctor".

Companies/Organizations I Currently Consider Evil or Stupid:
Why?: Claims to save time and accelerate processing but Wastes Hours of Time Submitting Rebate Offers no Recourse if Rebate Fails!! DELIBERATE THIEVES

All Rhapsody Playlists found in this page (and some not).. All Rhapsody Playlists YouTubeified

Tip Jar ->

or my Amazon Wish List

-[  Mind 'Fart' Blog (June 2005) ]

Web www.bl3nder.com

[ Index ][Top] blog:[Current,07][2006][2005] [YouTube-ified Playlists]

(6/30/05 2:19 AM): When I was at UNM, I used to spend a lot of time in that little room in the CS department with the 4 SGI-O2's, you know the room with the air condition vent in one side and the thermostat in the the other half (in the next office?), so it would be so dang frigid in the summer or so dang hot in the winter.. Anyhow, there was always one other in the room with me, on an adjacent O2, and that was Hao Haung.. A wonderful guy, and he could not get depressed, he was always smiling and sharing with me the new things of the day.. As much as I enjoyed his company, and cherished conversations with him, I could not get him to stop playing the Theme from Titanic.. Him and that song were virtually inseperable.. Anyhow, I created a playlist in honor of my memory of those days, and Hao Haung (I'm probably mis-spelling his name, I guess I can go check my email archives recently obtained from DAT tapes).. Anyhow, Hao, wherever you are, this one is for you.. The Carpenter's greatest hits and about 50 entries of Titanic..

(6/29/05 5:55 PM): Papa Murphy's Pizza is good stuff (if you are in New MExico).. BTW, That Trio mp3 player, tiger direct has a deal, that will last til tommorow, where you can get a 256 MB memory card and the player for 60 dollars, BUT you get enough rebate to knock the price down to 20 dollars.. The reason they offer rebates is that they can hold the money for 90 days, in which time they invest it in CD's and stocks, then make back some money, and they return it to you.. So you pay 60 bucks but you make it back.. Here is the link.

(6/28/05 5:01 AM): Doing an all-nighter, and I took time out to make a rhapsody playlist of ElToro's Dance List.. This one was inspired by el-toro's music page.. I had a hard time finding a lot of these, and just gave up in the middle.. Billy Paul's "Your Song" beats both Elton John's and Three Dog Night's version..

(6/25/05 10:21 PM): I have a video of the dog that destroyed my $300 laptop (read like the "cockroach that ate cincinati").

(6/22/05 8:01 PM): The problems in africa, as I'm hearing in the news is political, this is the reason for the Live8 Concert coming up in London. The problem, at least with some countries in Africa, is that the money goes there, and ends up just funding the country and not going to the people that are in need.. So Bob and them are driving this more as a political thing than a charity thing.. Bob just says "we know too much now", he said Midge Ure and Bono urged him to do another even though it didn't quite work last time.. I'm suprised the effort didn't repeat year after year, myself.. There was a lot of motivation and a lot of good vibes.. I mean Bob could probably just keep organizing these things over and over.. I mean, look at all these Christian ministries, they keep going and going.. Just a one time event is not going to do it.. You have to do it and keep doing it.. The problem is the political systems in these countries don't do enough to educate, develop or empower the people.. I think it was zimbabwe, recently the prime minister of zimbabwe tore down fields of shanty-towns as a punishment for not voting for him. This is the mindset of the men that come in power in these nations, they have no morals.. You give money to someone like this, its like giving it to Kim Jong-il. I think the war in IRAQ is just a step in fighting this problem..Yes I believe it has to do with oil, but it also has to do with learning to fight terrorists, and how to achieve that, as well as how to form democracies in nations where the people lack a civil support.. If you leave them to work it out their own way, it will not work.. Just as it didn't work for Bob.. Giving a nation money and food doesn't have the effect of educating and communicating ideas.. The first step to forming a dictatorship is eliminate all forms of outside communication, eliminate books, newspapers.. Even having an opinion about the government is seen as dangerous.. This is what the war in IRAQ is about, and unless we do something about it, we will end up just like any empire that failed because it would not deal with problems early enough, just like how the peoples of Germany failed to act early and take Hitler out of power.. You can't continue to pretend like nothing is going to happen, because eventually that which you least expect will happen, and it will happen because you didn't respond.. Dictatorships are not a given, they are cancers that should be cut out before they can grow and fester..

(6/22/05 5:19 PM): For the animators: If SEGA Animanium is interested in making money, really interested, they wouldn't release a 99 dollar package that only does 180 frames of animation (suitable only for walk cycles and simple one-shot actions, e.g. video games) with their famous IK system.. They would design it to work with blender also, and make it unlimited.. Note, the blender market is as wide as the world.. Its just their poor luck that the package is under-featured and their first consumers bought the complete package for 900 dollars..

(6/22/05 1:27 PM): Note, I get catalogs from tigerdirect.com, its a good magazine for the bathroom.. There is a mp3 player they are selling from china, no-less, for about $9.99 (after rebate) , they say it takes MMC/SD cards, if you are looking for a solid state mp3 player to take on walks, its probably just a drop in the bucket, a small expenditure.. However, I hope that's not all it takes to break it.. Hey it can be no worse than apple's new screenless ipod..

(6/22/05 1:14 PM): Got my BF2 DVD, took me a day with next-day air shipment from ebgames.com (BTW, ebgames is "Electronic Boutique", that's wher the eb comes from.. This store has been around since the 80s, babages was another famous 80s video game store, if you go to north-east mall in Ft. Worth, there was a game arcade called "Land of Oz", and precisely where that arcade was, there was a babages computer store for years, not telling what is there now.. ) . I confess though, I ordered it on monday night.. I predicted that all the stores would be out of them, so I just bit the bullet and paid the whopping 63 dollars to eb-games and fed-ex to get it here.. I don't think I've had faster service.. There must be a secret cache somewhere..

(6/22/05 9:13 AM): At least somewhat half relevant, I mean to music, I thought you guys should know something about how to protect yourself from spyware.. I don't believe spyware-killer applications can protect you from spyware.. Firewalls can't really do it either..

A good active way to protect your computer is to look at your ports..

Your computer comes with about 2^16 or 65536 ports, a port is nothing but a id, that specifies where a packet goes once it reaches the IP address (which represents your computer). So a port is a simple way for the packet to tell what application its meant for, beit web browser, video game, update utilities, or spyware.. When in doubt, whether my spyware protection is working or not, or if I really want full control of whether my applications are protecting me, I pull out an application called "tcpview". Tcpview is a program that allows you to see all your processes that are accessing the Internet, if you don't have zonealarm, you would see a lot more of these than I do, but what zonealarm does let through, you will find accessing the net.. You can see this because you are using tcpview, normally you wouldn't, and why would Microsoft want to package a utility like this with Windows? Could it be they have their own spyware, maybe you will find Microsoft's Instant Messenger is a default install on most copies of Windows.. It has the potential to be a leak fo security and spyware.. BTW, I removed Micorsoft Messenger from my machine by removing references to it in my registry, but a simple way is just to find the executeable and replace it with something else.. Anyhow..

Here are before and after shots of tcpview, when I boot up and work on the machine for a while, then I look at tcpview, kill some processes, and leave tcpview running, I also keep it running during games (helps to have a second monitor).. Note: if you are going to buy a LCD display, keep your old one, you can have a dual-head-display setup (most ATI cards have a DVI port that can be retrofitted as a vga port, to connect to a second monitor), the second head can be used to place monitors like tcpview up, so you can monitor processes accessing the net like this.

After discarding processes, my machine runs faster, because its not answering the net for all those bogus connections, the programs are not running, I'm more sure that someone is not key-logging my credit card number, etc..

See if anyone can run an application on your computer, there is the potential there for them to record your keystrokes.. This is equivalent to the concern over wireless keyboards.. You could have someone read your keystrokes and search them for patterns like credit card numbers.. This is why using services like paypal is commonplace (btw: Google will soon have its own payment system, its been making the press).

If you don't know which services to kill, take the port numbers for local and remote addresses and do a search on google for "port _____" where ____ is the port number.. Like port 25 and port 80 on remote addresses are email and web servers.. If you have a port 80 or 25 on the local address, that means you are running a server possibly, that is a web server or email server.. I sometimes run servers, like the "plone" server on 1027 (yeah the pythonw.exe, plone runs on python.. ), but since I'm not using this server, I tell tcpview to kill it. Not being a complete tech guru when it comes to networking, I can't tell you how to deinstall the spyware, how to recognize it, etc.. You have to just try killing things and see if that improves your internet connection, just don't kill your firewall. iAnother thing, you may see explorer.exe come up with a UDP connection.. I'm starting to wonder if this is not a trojan hoarse, maybe Microsoft and Zonelabs as well as AVG should know about this. I end up killing explorer.exe which kills my interface, but it comes back, if it doesn't I just open the task panel with Cntrl-Alt-Del (in Windows XP, to determine what operating system version you have, if you are a windows user, go to the "My Computer" icon on your desktop and right-click, select properties, it should tell you which version. *SIGH* I just noticed you wouldn't be able to do this, considering you have no desktop at this point..) and click RUN from edit menu, and enter in "explorer.exe" and this will bring your desktop interface back, explorer.exe handles your desktop GUI.

Anyhow, there are many other applications like tcpview, that you can use to watch other things like file usage, internet packets, and so forth.. I found tcpview with some other monitoring applications (look under "related" packages), distributed from this web page..

BTW, if you open the task panel and compare the numbers under "Process" in tcpview with the process numbers in the task panel, you will realize that the ":1528" (e.g.) is the process number, not the port number, like it is in the rest of the application.. Process number 0 is the system process, the funny thing is that for every firefox process there is a process thread under the system process, I think firefox must use a library in the Windows operating system to gain access to the Internet. Also it's not unheard-of for an application to connect with itself on the same machine nor for any application to connect with another on the same machine, its common for an experienced web developer to run a apache web server on their machine and connect with it via "localhost" or "127.0.0.1", but I usually set zonealarm to block its access to the net so people can't connect to the web server remotely. The value of have zonealarm, BTW, is that is another kind of firewall, its an application specific firewall.. The firewalls like routers are port-centric firewalls, they care more about where a packet is directed, but its not a sure thing to controlling spyware, as sure as you could have a webserver running on port 25 or an email server running on port 80.

(6/21/05 9:59 PM): Moved blog stuff of no musical significance to my blog, I was using this blog because it was easier for me to manage than the other, so I just replaced the other with this one, and cut it down a bit..

(6/21/05 4:44 PM): Just finished making banana pudding with nilla wafers and bananas in about 10 minutes, something like that.. Its got to be the fastest desert to make, up there with dumpcake..

I serriously would love it if someone would get me a copy of that demo that Guy Babylon did for Keyboard magazine on the web.. That guy has soo much talent, but its all I've heard of him.. I think he is or was Elton John's keyboardist for some time..

(6/21/05 1:13 PM): Did something different today, I exercised on the DDR, which is much the same as always, but I added dumbells to the mix.. I would not advise this for my friend Nate, who has a son walking around, I would fear the dumbbell falling on the child. But for me it offered a good quick workout, it just about works better than having the camera for combined foot and hand goals.. I think I will continue doing this, it may make for fun and good mindless exercise..

(6/21/05 11:19 AM): Doing the usenet binaries website for music videos is like doing the worst drug I've never ever tried (very few I've tried, like Caffiene).. But its like I can do a search for a musician and down the music video.. And I know, because of the way Usenet is distributed, there is no way the MPA or RIAA can stop it.. Its the last vestige of open and unmoderated data distribution. This is why the Usenet will not go away, one, source of other information besides music videos, and yeah porn, but its all the other stuff you get with usenet.. It was mainly created as a service to UNIX users back in the time when Unix was being openly developed by colleges, until AT&T sold everyone out and decided to license the sucker (what lead to the development of Linux and Open Source Systems).. Anyhow, there are some sites that take the pain out of de-encoding the files and allow people to download the result.. I've been watching music videos of musicians I haven't seen in years.. This is the wave of the future, and its actually riding on the system of the past.. Usenet was designed to be distributed over the internet and any available form of communication, in the early part of the Internet, BBS's would use usenet to allow people access to the Internet indirectly, back when purchasing a leased line involved more than just having the money.. So there are people, possibly even in china, using Usenet to distribute information out of the control of China, because one could use a HAM radio, there are parts of russia and europe that had Usenet access before the Internet ever came to town, its the fringe of Internet access, as it becomes available.. It's because usenet is distributed as a stream of packages, each package has any number of messages, these messages can contain binaries encoded as text, if you can distribute binaries, you can distribute anything regardless of the kind and form of the content, to a computer pictures, videos, music, programs, they are all the same thing, all binary.. Text is binary too, but not all text is divided into bytes.. A byte is 8 bits, to transfer english words you need about 5 bits (2^5 = 32 > 26), but usually the standard is something hovering from 6 to 8. 8 bits is necessary to suport all the funky graphics characters found on old PC's and Commodore 64's. Anyhow, what the binary encoding algorithms do is convert binary into a text-representation with a subset of a free binary representation, which actually makes the binaries larger in the text-encoding, but then you get a program that can convert that back into the binary representation.. So first your music videos are encoded as text, distributed in random order on some usenet channels, then one has a program that goes around looking for the pieces, assimilates them, decodes them back into music videos.. So even if the RIAA and MPAA shut down usenetbinaries.net, they would have to go after every person distributing usenet and shut them down as well, including Comcast.. Who offers usenet feeds as a value-added-benefit from their customers.. And even when they did, it wouldn't eliminate the possibility that russians and chinese would be using it.. The thing about usenet is its distribution is a superset of the Internet, it was how people communicated with each other even before there was an Internet..

Well I could be wrong, but this usenetbinaries site is a good source of music videos.. But I'm thinking it might lead to the purchase of a VHA or MTV2.. The problem is, I can't do a search on MTV2 and VH1, and get instant access to the music videos.. Like if I wanted to see every "Cock Robin" music video, I would have to wait around and let my DVR capture it, store it away.. The deal with Usenet, is that its about the same, you sit around and wait, but you can also search the archives for videos released..

I think however, the good thing about usenet music videos is you usually get the best and highest resolution representations of the music videos and the music becomes attractive again, because you see these bands were young once too, and they were hip and fun to watch, their music takes on a life of its own, almost apart from the artist, but now there is imagery attached, something that makes the song stick, makes it more appealing..

I think, for the artists, what disgusts them more about the open distribution of music videos is issues outside of making money.. Its having accurate representation (no manipulation of the content, no logos, etc..).. That they are not perceived as ugly or unattractive.. The great thing about usenet, is whatever gets shown is the best it is, or the usenet distributors will get rid of that content, so the posters of the content make sure its the best, and usually considering how hard it is to sustain a post and encode the binaries, every post is from a fan who really likes the content, who wants only the best representation of their band up there.. A good source of marketing, is to look at usenet and see what people keeping posting and reposting.. If it stays for a while on Usenet, its either that someone really likes and artist, or that a lot of people really like an artist.. Its not like Viacom saying "maybe someone will like this artist".. Viacom could do best to look at usenet to get ideas about what kind of content people prefer and learn from it, rather than trying to sculpt and form ind package it, you can sometimes tell the packaged bands from the original bands with unique styles.. Usenet distributed music videos, I feel, have a lot of soul, they speak something, its as if the music videos are like incredibly large characters of some other language, each music video used like a word to express an idea..

(6/20/05 11:55 PM): Amazon.com is really trying to be misleading with their shopping cart stuff.. The site is designed to make you buy more stuff, I went to obtain a "Cock Robin" CD, and I could not find a "checkout" icon nowhere at all, true I was only purchasing something about 7 dollars.. But that's no reason to prevent me from checking out.. I instead got another item, and later deleted it, then proceeded to purchase the item.. Then there is no logout button anywhere.. You have to click "I'm not _____". Proof that to be commercially successful you have to lie and mislead.. Now you know why fundamentally I hate capitalism, it drives people through bureucratic crap like this..

(6/16/05 12:01 PM): In Rhapsody there is something that functions a bit like the radio customization in Launch but is better, because it plays the most popular choices and not just anything they want you to listen to.. Like if you say you like Queen, you won't get Queen and then 9 rap groups.. I hate Launch for that stupidness.. Typical of marketing groups to think this way, give them 50% what they want and compromise their wishes in interest of influencing their tastes.. Anyhow, in Rhapsody this is not the case with it's radio customizations.. You get about ten artists to stuff in a custom radio channel.. What it means is that the channel picks those musicians and related musicians as sources.. Its like if you put Jesus, you would get Jesus his Diciples and all those who had a laying on of hands by the diciples..

I created a radio channel: Spine Tingling Music (choices: Asia, Thomas Dolby, Supertramp, Howard Jones, Genesis, Boston, Electric Light Orchestra, Gary Wright, Alan Parsons Project, Billy Thorpe), there is probably a better choice for this selection, but I figured this was suitable, it may change.. But like a rain guage, I'll see what I collect and generate a playlist from it.. The advantage is you can focus in on a particular group you can't get, for instance I have a channel called "Beatles", you can extrapolate what my selection is there..

Try making a channel with nothing but Jeff Lynne, call it the Jeff Lynne Channel and you will get all the music that Jeff Lynne had something to do with or contemporaries. I think some influences on the choices is probably what musicians people who listen to Jeff Lynne Contemporaries tend to listen to.. There are grad students in Computer Science that think up weighting algorithms that would be perfect for uses like this.. Anyhow, I created an ELO channel with Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood as the only contents.. I guess I could put ELO in there, but ELO has a bunch of contemporaries I don't care to lisent to..

I'm totally wrong.. Its selecting from the Genre, this sucks..

Some other stations I made that seem to work:

Billy Joel's Dream (Bob James, Billy Joel, The Four Seasons)
Todd Rundgren (Todd Rundgren, Utopia)
Synth Fantasy (Tomita, Taco)

(6/15/05 4:09 PM): Funny Country Songs (r) (only a few I know).. I was listening to Thomas Dolby and the Cars, about the time that my parents listened to these songs and attended Cowboys games.. To tell you the truth I only enjoyed looking at the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, I don't understand football well enough to really care. I was more into PacMan and Galaga at the time.. Some things never change, now its BF2 and Weezer..

(6/15/05 3:25 PM): Somewhere I missed a day (or I got yesterdays date wrong).. Anyhow, read in the news about the Wright Amendment concering Dallas Love Field and D/FW Airport in Texas, being a ex-citizen of Ft. Worth, I can comment.. American Airline is a fine airline but their prices are way too high, the leg room is not quite as nice as Southwest, you get about 3 seats on each side of the aisle, the planes are the same size as Southwest's planes.. Southwest is about the same, usually with a lot more leg room, but the planes are older. You get about a can of coke, and peanuts.. American airlines serves a meal, usually something like Chicken Cordon Bleu.. I used to fly between parents pretty much between 1979 and up, and I don't recall much of any concern about the D/FW and Lovefield lawsuits and such.. D/FW is much nicer, in terms of how the terminals are designed, you get off the plane, the baggage carousel is right there, you get your bags, you leave, or you travel to another part of the airport and fly out.. The airport has hotels, it is so large it has its own zip code (no serriously!).. Kennedy and LAX Airports don't hold a candle to D/FW.. D/FW is easily 10 times as large as lovefield. It was designed to be an international super-hub, possibly funded by lots of oil riggers money. Anyhow, love field is smaller, its like any other airport in the world, you get off the plane, walk down a L shaped hallway (probably where the Love name came from), and you usually wait about 10-15 minutes and get your bags.. Its a bit like the brooklyn airport, smaller than LAX. D/FW's quality is a bit like the Chicago Airport.. I like the Denver Airport (nice building design).. The most disgusting airport, New Orleans, its practically a swamp, food services in the airport are like hot-dogs and microwaveable burgers for 5-10 bucks. You'd think New Orleans would be selling Gumbo in the airport. Even those of Fort Worth have a bit of a feud with Dallas over the naming of D/FW, which really should be FW/D .

To keep this thread relevant, as if any of my threads are relevant.. When I was about 25, I flew to Ft. Worth on D/FW and midair was asked by the flight crew to advance to first-class, I was mystified.. And nobody explained anything to me.. All I saw up there was this black man with his wife and gold rings on every finger.. Anyhow, I put my bags in the overhead compartment behind him, and slammed the luggage door shut. All of a suddent this man jumped about two feet and raised his hand in the air, palms up.. I was mystified, what did I do.. He looked really scared.. Well once we arrived in D/FW, I noticed a thin white man in a cowboy hat got up and said to the black man "I'm so proud to meet you, I'm a musician too".. And I was still mystified, I didn't recognize the guy at all.. Well it figures, because I soon found out it was Charley Pride I was sitting behind.. He had purchased a bunch of empty available seats in the first-class zone and filled them with people big enough to be body-guards, I guess he didn't have any of his own with him.. But I can still remember the look on his face when I slammed that door, I really had no idea Charley! (r) ..

I'm not much of a country music fanatic, to twist the punch-line to the blues brother's country/western bar skit, we've got both kinds of music here, Rock and Roll.. Now there is a little bit of country music.. Maybe the reason I hate Country music so much is that I can't stand Texas, its too dang flat!! However I wouldn't mind living in San Antonio..

(6/14/05 10:02 PM): Hmmm, I was listening to Steely Dan's newest album "Everything Must Go", and when listening to the title song, I noticed how much it sounds like a Harry Connick Jr. Song from a decade before.. Listen to these two songs (r), and see if you can tell what I'm picking up on.. As far as I can tell the only thing they possibly share is the drummer, but the chording progressions are not distinctive of Donald Fagan, I think he had help on this song..

(6/14/05 4:48 PM): Working on a mod that will split the blog into pieces to make it easier to wade through, bare with me, I will have it done sometime soon.. It shouldn't be too different from the first page, only instead of using labels, it will turn the identifiers into get-url calls, thus #347wErwerWE becomes ?id=347wErwerWE . BTW, how I'm generating that link is using the metaphone call in php, I could just use a seeded random number generator, but I was so lazy I didn't want to write the code to make the rand() calls.

(6/14/05 4:11 PM): Recognize anybody in this photograph?

Evidently Huey Lewis and the Doobie Brother's lead guitarist (John McFee) were in a band called Clover in the 70s. I was really interested in John McFee after seeing him in a Live music performance of the doobies doing "what a fool believes", and John amazingly was doing pieces of Michael McDonald's keyboard part on guitar.. I was thinking, I don't recognize this guy, must have been a young Skunk.. I guess there were a lot of people in and out of the Doobies. Note, Michael McDonald was in Steely Dan for a while. Look at this photo to determine which one is John McFee. The Astute one is a chiropracter. Just to go to show you the music business is not well paying.. I know the bassist for the motels is working as a medical lab technician in Albuquerque.

Unlike the motels lead singer, I don't think Huey Lewis ever ditched his band for a solo career.. There should be a site for musicians who sold out and ditched their band for a solo career..

(6/14/05 8:30 AM): C-SPAN covers Energy, Fox-News was covering the Aruba incident, and CNBC is covering energy.. Shows you were Fox's heart is.. Sesnsationalism, its what america needs, its what america wants, poor stupid America, it can't be concerned about the things it should be. People go missing every year by the thousands, money and time shouldn't be wasted on cases like this in Arruba, just because Fox has nothing to broadcast that will get them viewers and thus more money from advertisers. Note 4 out of 5 callers to C-SPAN's people-oriented shows have nothing of relevance to anything to talk about. I noted this morning some guy was bringing up the issue about the meaning of the pyramid symbols on a dollar bill.. Another thought America's fuel was junked up to encourage auto manufacturers to make bigger engines. One believed that the energy bill supported 4 executives of ENRON.. And so on and so on.. It just goes to show you how informed America is.. And instead what they get are stories of no importance to the country, from sensationalist stations like FOX. FOX at best debates the spirit of coverage, but doesn't discuss issues that matter about the survival of America.

Anyhow, I believe the best source of energy is Atomic energy.. To make hydrogen fuel you need lots of electricity, so to make energy we need more energy.. Since Atomic fuel is abundant, but is not transportable like hydrogen fuel, we need nuclear plants making hydrogen fuel, to become independent of oil. Natural gas and Coal are possible resources but the benefit from these fuel sources may not make America completely independent.. And Solar power and wind power?? Maybe.. We need more objective info about this..

Fox is not mainly a news collection source, its primarily a news making source, know the difference. But it would be nice if Fox would debate the energy topic to great length rather debate sensationalist topics like Micahel Jackson and kidnappings/murders that just get them more viewers. Have you ever thought that the reason why America's economy is doing so poorly is that people are watching and worrying over too much news from Fox about stuff that shouldn't really concern them? It's at best common topics that people can openly discuss.. Topics that divide people..

BTW, Blogs are the source of America's voice.. Its the first such source, don't screw with it!!! If you can't take the Blogs, might as well get out of the news delivering business..

(6/13/05 8:04 PM): Signed up with this service (http://www.usenetbinaries.com/) last night, its a usenet server, I'm serriously thinking about switching at the end of the month. In spite of the porn, its got a huge collection of 80s music videos, ripped from VH1 some, but not all.. The deal with Usenet is its more far reaching than the Internet because its distributed across Bulletin Board systems because of the UUCP protocols.. So its the last place I expect to see the RIAA trying to regain control.. Anyhow, if you can spare to spend 10 dollars, this is a good site, until you hit the 2 gig per day limit.. I was pushing it to see how far it would go.. I serriously doubt it gets its content directly from usenet, its more like usenet pack-rat of media. But Internet usage costs something these days.. Just not very well defined.. Half the trouble with Usenet is the extraction, try to successfully de-uuencode videos from the music video group and it may make you miserable, that's part of the reaon to go with a site that already has the videos decoded..

(6/13/05 7:04 PM): Fusion/Funk, Headhunters (r), Herbie Hancocks old Funk band from the 70s. Hate rap, but I love disco.. Funky disco is the best.. The Brothers Johnson are the remedy (r).

(6/13/05 1:28 AM): Giving you some Eddy Grant's singing talent, I thought I'd follow up with the Lennon Estate.. (r)

(6/13/05 1:15 AM): Quote from somewhere below in the page

Finding albums on Rhapsody

Specifics: "Studio Group", "Winning Combinations", "Giants of Jazz" , "Hi-Five" , "N.Y.C.", "Tribute To", "Sax Tribute To", "Guitar Tribute To", "20th Century Masters", "Maximum" (argh! found out this is bad-biography that real uses to torture artists they don't have albums from), "Karoke"
Inspecifics: "Records", "Platinum", "Gold", "Greatest Hits", "Then And Now"

You Can Guess: ...Need I say more?

(6/13/05 12:50 AM): BTW, Eddy Grant is on rhapsody finally (r)

(6/13/05 12:19 AM): HAve determined that Earthlink is evil incarnate.. Am thinking about switching, maybe just to comcast since I'm already subscribed to it.. Earthlink does suppport SMTP/POP3 but they do all they can to keep people from switching services.. Including making it so you can take emails from a MDB file and put them in some other format.. Note, I determined that the MDB file is really a Access Database File, and if you have a MDB viewer for access, you can read it back as a set of tables.. However I'm not an access dude.. I still consider this not a solution, they should have a Email extracter.. And nowhere on their site do they tell you how to do this.. I had this guy on Earthlink "Norman M." help me, and he totally beat around the bush.. I mean an hour long wait, no kidding.. I was watching music videos between the time when I would ask a question and the Norman would reply.. And practically all the help I could get from Norman could be deduced from intuition.. Like, I would get the Erthlnk.mdb file, then he said "Why don't you try puting it at this path: .... " wait 3 minutes "C:\Doc...Settings\UserName\ ApplicationData \ Earthlink ... ".. This is where I got the MDB file dufus.. He's telling me to put it back there.. I load up the malibox software which (I had failed to deinstall, hacking registry ad infiniteum, note Earthlink loads a ton of Keys into the registry).. Anyhow, he deduced from my not being able to load up the email program which was not working even when I didn't have the mdb file in place, that my mdb file was corrupted.. Earthlink seems to be hiring a few people that lied on their resume. This guy knew didly squat about computers from what I could tell.. Probably surfs the net for answers.. Anyhow.. A good employee would have passed on to his superior, unless the employee was worried the superiors would begin to suspect.. Oh well.. I'm going to look around the net for tools to extract it.. Or try extracting it on the laptop that I got Earthlink installed on last week after SweetPea tugged my previous laptop to the ground (the hard drive thankfully works).. Sorry, I just hate it when I get clueless tech support that is obviously consulting the online manuals I've searched a billion times.. Note, Netscape Email, once I tried it, as well, it's tech support is in India, that's why its 9 dollars a month.. Also unlike Earthlink, its completely web-based.. I think that was the quickest install and deinstall I had ever done in my life.. Install -> oh its a web based email, like hotmail --> call billing, drop me --> deinstall (in time, out time less than 15 minutes)..

Earthlink is getting more annoying by asking me if I want a fast Internet line, and I tell them I have comcast, you can't compete.. They kindly hang-up..

I'm the kinda guy who referred MCI to the FTC Do Not Call, and MCI wrote me a letter saying that they knew I was on the National Do Not Call list, but that I was not off their internal do not call list.. ARgh!!! But now they have me on their internal list.. Nothing a FTC penalty fee won't fix..

(6/12/05 11:29 PM): Jamiroquai is as fun to watch as he is to listen to.. BTW, I am using the firefox plugin and it is working, so this is not quite a (ies), so yeah its a portal, but its still firefox compatible..

I don't know if its completely possible for me to get tired of Jamiroquai (watching video to "You Give Me Something" which is on Rhapsody.. Too bad the stupid record companies just follow the trends, whatever the youngsters think is hot.. Well.. Jamiroquai is like listening to Stevie Wonder in the 70s.. Just newer.. And besides the guy can dance.. And even if that isn't him, his onscreen counterpart is good enough to represent him.. I guess this is like listening to BT.. I couldnt' believe that guy was BT.. I mean he looks like a model. Now I'm not gay, in any sense of the word, and I'm not homophobic (I lived in New York for a couple of years, come on).. I just like cool videos.. I absolutely hate videos where people are doing something unoriginal, or too simple, I guess I hate cliche videos, especially if there is no groove to it..

(6/12/05 3:38 PM): BTW, that "Tommy Hook" story, evidently from what I was able to gather from some friends in the lab, the whistle-blowers are seen as loud mouths.. Its more guys like me but in the spotlight of a large video camera.. Knowing my web-hosters will cap off my distribution at about 2 gigs or so, I know I can't and will never reach a larger audience (I guess, except for google caching).. Anyhow, Tommy Hook, according to suspicions of those I know, his wife was in Albuquerque, and he was at a topless bar, at 2 in the morning and got beat up. He made up this story to cover him.. Note, it made the press.. If he had told the truth he probably would have been forgiven.. But since he said "I got beat up by informants" you can see how this story makes him look like a manipulative jerk.. Tommy, you can still tell the truth, just the value has diminished since before the press dumped it on everyone.. Anyhow.. His wife should forgive him because such incidents can kill a marriage if the wife forgets that she too does sin.. We make mistakes.. And I forgive him for telling this wild story, and making me write two pages about him.. But it doesn't keep me from getting frustrated from wasting a two page blog on it.. How could I be so gullable?? Easy, I assume everyone is telling the truth.. However, I tend to condemn people if they don't do things the way I think they should have.. I don't give people the benefit of the doubt, and its caused a great deal of problems for me, especially in arguements.. I can easily get an arguement with someone who assumes everyone knows what they are doing, I assume the world is crazy, so I assume there has to be a better way, or if I know it, that's the way things should have been done. So it turns into a fight over what one can accept and the other thinks he knows.. But I do know everything!! Ha! Just kidding.. It's easier for me to let go of an idea when I feel I've answered it.. However, the flip side is those who want just to win the discussion even though they don't completely think they know, its like if you give someone the benefit of the doubt or the benefit of getting the last word, you are somehow more easy to live with.. But we could discuss things like the dutch, and be equally frustrated when we chose to disagree, but if you take your mind off the score and put it elsewhere, returning to the discussion will make you realize how stupid it was anyway.. So if you are in a fight about some topic, and you can't win, because each wants the last word, allow the other to have it or say you disagree if its too important a subject, and drop the topic..

But I just hate it when someone will stop a topic of discussion just because they are disinterested, especially when I'm really interested in it.. I guess the deal is they are not interested in it.. But still I want to talk and tell them everything I I just thought up in a mind-blurt.. For me its not that the other completely understands or cares, to me its the act of saying it, and maybe getting some kind of feedback as a result.. Its the acknowledgement that that which I am saying is going somewhere.. Blog serves that purpose..

Another idea that bugs me, some Christians think that if you spend too much time somwehere that its like somehow you made that thing into a God.. Maybe.. But there are also people in the world that think anything is evil if it resembles a phallus. I have a favorite shirt I like to wear from Tally Hall, and I can't help but imagine what people think that shirt is about "Do you want a banana?", but that's just an interpretation, if I was a sleazy lounge lizard I probably would stress that idea, but to me its about this exciting music video that a group of college students in Ann Arbor - Michigan made, but then again maybe they were intentionally making something that could be interpretted both ways. But its the one who interprets it who perceives the message.. You see what you want to see and disregard the rest. Information is like technology, you can use it for good or bad.. It depends on the interpreter.

(6/12/05 3:08 PM): The reason my blog entries are not spell checked and proof-read.. Umm, I write each entry as one huge line without carriage returns or line feeds.. So it's written like one long mind blurt.. Read my entries like you read english instructions on a mp3 player you bought from Korea.. You just have to read and re-read over again to see what I meant to say.. But if it doesn't make sense, just dis-regard it.. I draw mroe satisfaction from having said something than from having anyone understand it.. So you can see why I blog..

(6/12/05 2:34 PM): Anyhow, played BF2 the other night and really liked it.. My graphics card and CPU are not up to par to really play it.. I need to have a better PC, argh.. Oh well, its fine at lower graphics settings.. What I really like about the game is the commander mode, those who play the best can become a commander of all the others.. Its like a form of democracy embedded in the game.. You decide who you want to be in a squad with, the squad leader then becomes the spawn point.. People will follow a squad leader if they want to go where he does.. If you don't like this relationship, you can chose not to have a squad or be in one. If you are the highest rank player in a game, you can chose to command or not.. The commander just oversees the map, and doesn't really get to play, what he does do is rain missiles on locations, he can drop supply crates, scan the map for enemy troops, and evenb direct the squads to objectives.. The squad leaders can also ask the Commander to run a UAV scan over a particular part of the map to point out locations of the enemy.. I also like the fact that the officers can spot helicopters, tanks and enemy troops and show their findings to all the other players.. Also, anyone with charges and drive can take out the commander's control beacons.. So there is no way you can really corner the play.. But you will find a over abundance of medic players.. I'm sure this will get tuned in game patches.. But if you are medic, you can heal yourself, throw a grenade -> heal yourself --> throw a grenade --> heal, etc.. It seems to be very well thought out.. BTW, some who have played America's Army will recognize a lot of stuff as rip-offs from America's Army.. Everything but the delay, the length of the game, to a re-spawn. So BF2 stole some stuff from other games, but I'm sure people will like it.. If you have a fast connection, I suggest getting a torrent client and go to download this game.. ITs a MFPS blast!!

(6/12/05 1:52 PM): I think some degree of the stuff I write is a result of not getting enough sleep, so if it looks weird, it probably is when I was half-awake.. I removed one entry from my blog because I got incensed by how China was controlling its people's communications, and I went off the deep end had said "We need to get together and help China overthrow their government." I actully don't think that to be so bad, but would be better to get the people to think differently, like maybe inspire 10% to follow Christ's teachings.. Communism and Socialism creates some really strange thought.. Communism is a bit like what workers do in unions, the idea is to elevate everyone to the same high (or low) and eliminate disparity between the people.. If you ever saw that movie the "God's Must Be Crazy", when someone drops a coke bottle from the sky... And a tribe ends up killing each other for this wonderful thing.. Most of Christ's teachings are based on this idea, that people hate others because of what they don't have and then lust after it.. The problem with Communism, is it is not complete.. It's not Christian.. It's like a dumbed down version of Christianity with the Authority removed.. Others might say Christianity is an elaborate version of this principle.. But the idea that Christ puts across is that we are all guilty of sin and none of us deserves to be saved, but it was God's choice and Christs to save us through Christ's blood. But those who seek it will receive it, as can all, and even those not seeking Christ will find him... And think, what is the advantage of Communism? Everyone benefits, but nobody is given a choice outside of it.. If you choose not to share with others, what happens? Now you know where Socialism came from, it's just puting someone who is also a sinner to be in control of the system that was supposed to be perfect.. It's the mechanizing/fixing of Communism to yield fruits from everyone beneficial to everyone but primarily to the government.. Not much different than what drug dealers do.. And to punish those that produce bad fruits.. Anyhow, I may be oversimplifying it.. But this thought has been sticking with me all along for the last week "JEsus is lord over all".. That means he's lord over the communists, over the socialists, the druggies, the rich people, the institutions, the bad guys, etc.. It's man arrogance, that we think, somehow we can fix societies problems, or that we have complete control, when we realize later we don't, all of man's idealism won't save him when he is dead, that's what Christ is for.. Everything we think we know, we don't, we need others, and no man could have written a book so much loaded with detail as the bible.. Even those who remember the entire bible verse by verse, if they don't live it, its nothing, because it only means something to those who use it.. And those who know it all and live it, can't be saved unless they are baptized, as Christ was baptized before he could become who he is. Before baptism he was a man, after, he became known as God's son.

It says in the bible, its not what goes into a man that defiles him, its what comes out of him.. We don't think perfectly, and if we take ourselves too seriously it could have drastic consequences, we do what we do and what we can't God does..

I think the Chinese are much closer than we think to accepting Christ, communism isn fundamently Christianity, its the socialism that needs to be thrown away.. However there is that verse that says "give to a man what his works are worth", this can produce the kind of disparity in rich and poor that communism tries to eliminate, but if nobody strives to do any better how do they or anyone benefit? God blesses everyone regardless of their position in society, that's why you can see rich people who feel worthless and poor people who feel rich. There is the saying "Those who have more will be given more, those who have nothing, even what they do have will be taken from them".. This is a reflection of the way the world is, and how someone blessed with riches will be given more.. However, its also a reflection of thankfulness.. Those who are not thankful, will lose sight of what was given them and it will fall away before their eyes.. And those who are thankful will be given more (whether they want it or not).. Note, those who are blessed and thankful tend to give what they own to others.. Those who want everything will lose all that they have due to neglect.. But try not to get so attached to what you have that it causes you to sin when it falls away. Nobody gains anything in death, if you didn't want God, if you were nto thankful for God, will God want or be thankful for you? It's like a trashcan, you throw your trash in the can, but sometimes the trash is worth something and you redeem it.. When youa re dead you are like discarded trash, but before you can be burned by the depths of hell God may find enough value in you that he goes back in and redeems that which is thrown away but not destroyed.

When its said Christ is lord over all, I think what this means is Christ works through people, through spirit and teachings, through principles of self management. Also Christ has complete control over the macro environment.. But God allows us choices..

One of my beliefs is that God can see the outcome of all choices, and will change the macro universe and influence the people to make choices that are acceptable.. It's that we as humans are incapable of seeing everything or even seeing all possible outcomes of the trillions of choices made every day..

I think Chaos theory is the study of patterns in randomness, otherwise if it didn't have a pattern it wouldn't be a niche of science. However, I believe God controls the randomness of the universe. Note that the Deciples chose straws when asking god to make a choice? This isn't to condone gambling.. No, god can control randomness.. But its god's choice, our environment and the precision of things is controlled directly or indirectly by God.. It's a bit like if you have a machine and it works well, you every now and then need to hit it or tweak the valves to keep it working.. Somewhere in the randomness God has something like valves, and he controls that to keep things working.. But instead of tweaking things over time and watching for the outcome, he sees the outcome of all choices for all time and judges the result by the outcome at the end of time, every choice we make determines the success at the end of time, but God maintains that Christ will reign and the devil will lose. Actually this will happen anyhow, if you read revelations..

Okay Kiernan, in your arrogance, you think you can put God in a box?? Yeah I'm a man, that's what man does.. But this is the extent of my idea of how things work in the universe.. Others are not so convinced or satisfied, those are either ones seeking god, or ones seeking to do away with god.. But its a man who is arrogant, and thinks he knows everything, and ends up empty-handed, it's that thnankless man who ends up killing himself, because he simply is not thankful.. Sin is what we do when we feel we lack.. We lust as a result.. And we sin..

Well I don't know if God is outside of time, I don't know how he works, if I did, by my selfish human nature (like something out of a LOTR movie) I would be god if I knew.. But I know enough I don't want the job. But it helps to know something about what it involves..

What may put a n end to catholicism, have you ever thought that the difference between catholicism and communism/socialism is how things are controlled? A true christian chruch doesn't have a hiearchy of control nor does it have a visible governing body.. That's why Church and State are seperated in this country.. Because it would be a catholic country, and soon it would be replaced with communism and socialism once those at the top started rewriting the doctrine. Lucky for us, though that the catholics do read the bible and consider the teachings.. Yes, its possible to be Christian without being a catholic, the problem is people think they can get to heaven just by following steps and guidelines, offloading the responsibility on others, high levels or accountability and control.. No, that's what a government does to keep people from hurting each other, the bible just outlines who we are, how we think and who god is, and how he thinks, and that we don't know everything, and the evil that we see is not always what we think it is, that's because if we did we would have God's position, and someone has to be in control, but that someone is good, not selfish.. I mean if God was not in control, someone else would be and would they be good? Also if God controlled everything, would it be interesting to him? So he choses to control onething, everybody else controls the others. But that there is evil in the world proves that we are incapable of handling even the choices he gives us.. But he blesses/non-blesses whoever he wants, that's his choice. But he's stated, "in the end, Christians will win". It says in the bible, Paul's (Saul's) teacher said (transliterating) "If it comes to nothing it was a cult, if it doesn't die awau and continues, its something from God". That is the litmus test of the end result of Christianity.. If it comes to nothing it was a cult, if it continues it's the kingdom of heaven, and no matter what amount of wrong is in the world, the right will win. BTW, I'm perfectly awake, but I ask that you treat it with a grain of salt..

(6/12/05 5:35 AM): Got up early, around 3, had nightmare about bears entering home. Imagery evoked from readings of martian chronicles. I'm getting more into books on tape.. Reading normally puts me to sleep, but books on tape are more interesting. Found this commercial while doing a search for "Brown Recluse" (recalling stories of my mom at niece's b-day party).. When one surfs the net, it can't get stranger than this.. Well the time wasn't wasted, I was able to get a songlist together for church.. I'm going back to bed.. BTW, found in the directory of a horrid thumb-bite from a brown recluse, I found this commercial.. I think this is the craziest commercial I've ever seen. I think actors latch onto ssuch opportunities to show their talent in making silly faces. Especially the woman, you'd think her whole face was biten by a brown recluse.

(6/3/05 7:19 AM): Ron Howard is being interviewed on ABC about Cinderella Man, I think Ron has been married to his co-producer friend for forever, I usually see them on Charlie Rose.. Probably a good movie, but didn't they also produce the "lady killers"? Anyhow.. I didn't even bother to look at the first hit on the Jackie Rogers link.. Low and behold that is the Billy Crystal (as Sammy Davis Jr.) skit with Cristopher Guest, easy to confuse with Dana Carvey, (Rajeev Vindaloo, gay character) that is such a hoot. Found the episode in an SCTV episode guide, using google Turns out it was SNL, they had Jim Belushi doing a part, Captain Kangaroo (note Captain was still on the air in 85, I think) I would picture Dave Thomas doing, aka rick moranis' fellow hoser from the Strange Brew duo the McKenzie Brothers.. Uh, okay you can tell how much a devoted SCTV fan I am, Dave Thomas did Komrade Kangaroo, I guess this was poking fun at captain kangaroo.. I wonder if Dave Thomas is related to Dave Thomas of the Wendy's chain. Of course, no..

(6/3/05 7:07 AM): Just heard on ABC that iPod users have a coupon of 50 dollars, through a class action lawsuit, coming to them.. I believe they have more if a lot of them would drop their working device on the floor.. No I'm just kidding.. .. . . Oh ... Oh no.. you did??? ... oh Sorry.. you probably crashed the heads on the hard drive ... I was poking fun, the same happens if you drop a working laptop on the floor from 6 feet..

(6/2/05 10:55 PM): Hmm.. Well I have to get off the Internet at some point. BTW, the library had two cool DVD's: Leonard and William talk about how Star Trek changed their lives it's called "Mind Meld" (note the DVD says something about them "facing death", if that doesn't make them feel old, shatner is not old, it's just his material (r).. But maybe if Elvis Costello and Shatner got together, I bet they could be the next Gilbert and Sullivan), and the complete SCTV (I guess all the seasons).. Darn I should have set the extra laptop up just to watch "Jackie Rodgers Jackpot Wad", Martin Short's best character, the Albino Game Show Host.. Canadian commedy is quite a bit different from British commedy, I mean its funny without being Lewd or Vulgar, and without being self-aware (why does commedy have to be ego-centric, is this the tragedy that "The King of Commedy" portrays?).. Maybe I'm not a good judge of character.

(6/2/05 9:40 PM): Spent the last 5 hours listening to an incredibly interesting audio-book "Face The Nation - Bob Schieffer".. I don't mean to get political on everybody but I guess its a bit late to be apologizing.. Anyhow, this is a really cool Audio Book, get it and listen to it on your commute if you have a commute (I work at home, so this is a rare pleasure for me), it really shortened the length of our long trip.. I won't spoil it but it covers everything from McCarthy Era to Castro to Monica Lewinsky to Iraq.. Its bizarre and funny, and really strange.. Just one of those CD's that will make you drop your jaw (I never saw this on TV..), and different from some audio books (I guess) its one that is read by the author of the book..

Tonights special blog is presented to you by way of La Quinta's free Wireless Internet Access in an Abilene, Texas hotel... The throughput is something like cable modem, about 300-500K per/sec down.. The printed materials say its about 50 times a modem, which is about 250Kilobytes a second or about 2Mbit (1 byte = 8 bits, 250Kilobytes is 8 * 250 Kilobits, ot 2 Mbit). Free!! The funny thing though, to get on the network you have to use your IE browser ( I guess any), and it then connects the computer. Pretty cool!!.

Other things, oh yeah I got the audio books at the library, Los Alamos Library is cooler than other libraries because it had PHD's that peruse the materials and guarantee the stuff that gets in is top quality (usually tends to be something have to do with the Atomic bomb..). Saw the DVD "Focus" with William H. Macy and Laura Dern about Prejudism against jews.. It was a bit bland, though it was effective, it makes me believe that Laura Dern just loves mildly controversial dramas in which she can dress and act a bit like like Lily Tomlin's Ernestine character.. Have we seen Laura Dern in a movie other than "present day" movies, and other than jurrasic park movies, aka futuristic science-fiction subjects? She does look good, but I can't wait for the day she takes a role in a space movie playing and amazon woman. Just kidding, but she could take up Sigorney Weaver's position in Aliens, maybe? Probably not.. Anyhow, its maybe just a matter of what parts she gets, she probably tries for a lot of hard stuff and doesn't get it..

Another Laura Dern movie, the "fat man, little boy" movie ends on a sad/sour note about the terribleness of the atomic bomb and los of this scientist that "John Cussack" was playing, but friends of mine who knew and where in Los Alamos at the time of the dropped bomb said that everyone was happy and celebrating, nobody was really sad at all.. It's just the way Hollywood tends to spin things, to make everything look sad.. But movies are effective at people's minds, is it truthful? You can make things feel different without saying a word, until people define the language of truth to the scenes, mood and lighting and the context of the message, people will realize this is an alternate history, thus fiction, which it is, but emotionally it can set people off on a protest at the lab and feel sour toward the lab when what really sucked about WWII was not the nukes, that what saved us, if it had not happened or occured, we'd all be dead or arians.. And besides the germans were already working on the technology.. It was just a matter of whoi got to it first.. You can't stop ideas from happening.. God gave us the capacity to realize this technology, no way to keep us from finding it or using it.. Anyhow.. I learned on that Audio-Book today that Joe Mcarthy used Communism Fears and Blacklisting of Celebrities to possibly elect him as president, or to further his own agendas, and it worked because people tended to believe everything they heard and saw on TV.. This will not happen these days, and this audio-book was made to be entertaining, so even Bob Schieffer could be at fault for misleading me if he was telling half-truths, but make your own decision.. Anyhow.. I've seen neither Farenheit 911 nor Passion of Christ.. I'm not into silly nor violent movies, respectively. Though I've thought about seeing the Passion, but the last violent movie I saw was "event horizon", and shut it off after 5 minutes.. Before that was Hellraiser, which gave me nightmares.. I can't believe people watch this crap.. But knowing Mel Gibson was in Mad Max where the last scene in the movie his chracter instructs a crazy man cuffed to a car on fire, giving him a hacksaw "I saw you got 30 seconds, you have a choice you can hack through your ankle and escape or die".. (or something like that).. You think I would want to see the Passion? I don't care what Mel Gibson's moral conviction is, like Rupert Murdock he's playing the Christian population as a willing and paying audience.. I mean its worked for TV evangelists for years.. Mike Moore is playing the same position from the radical liberal side.. I took "guerilla video" in college from someone just abotu as crazy as Mike, it got me credit, so I know the tricks of getting a point across by juxtaposing clips and how to make stuff unairable, etc.. I did a video telling people how to fake emails by telneting directly to port 25 and talking to the SMTP server, I don't know if that's possible anymore.. I recall emailing my teacher as President Clinton thanking him for the great support and other such stuff.. I could have let it go pretty far and got him in a lot of trouble, but I saved him from humiliation then folowed with this final project.. I think what really was an experience was editing tape with a linear A-B roll system, that was the most awful experience I've ever had, I'm so glad for digital video editing systems.. But probably would have thanked taking the cours at least 5 years later, but I had to finish my degree.. Hey I'm a CS major with a art minor.. I was short of a double major in art and CS, maybe I should have done that.. Anyhow.. At least I can catch the media at their own game and see through the crap.. A little bit of hindsight.. I guess I'm a skeptic, but.. Sometimes the best experience is that which you would never consider (sounds like I'm learning the Dark Jedi arts, but I wouldn't switch to the dark side, not evil enough to justify it). For instance I can't believe there are CS majors out there with enough experience and the stoop so low to make viruses and trojan hoarses, justifying it as a means of survival, or to make up for some sort of lacking or using some other injustice as justification, righting a wrong with wrong. I guess I already suggested something like that with the lawyers and consumers below.. Which would you have bankrupt predatory lenders or trojans, spyware and virrii..

One of Christ's sayings is "don't worry about tommorow, for you can not make one hair white or black".. Worry is where evil starts.. Just like the distrating point for annikin walker that he could save his wifes life, in the end darth sidious tells .. well see that star wars movie.. I just think what drives a lot of these Trojans, Spyware, etc.. is it gives some people a feeling of control over that which they fear, or to support some dream of blackmail, ID theft.. Some figure, I guess, if its possible, and there is nothing that can stop them, they will do it.. To that end you will find a way to hell, America got here by people doing each other good, not by doing people evil.. Look across the sea.. Look at history.. You could consider to a similar end, if america will go to pot, how bad can it get? Bad.. Worry and hopelessness is a function of perception, if you see a hopeless future, it will be hopeless, if you strive to see good, you will see good.. Sometimes the people who see bad in the future create bad to justify their point, that's what I believe these Trojan, Spyware and Virii guys largely are doing.. Not justifying it, but as an experiment to see what will happen, if it will reveal their suspicions about the government, UFO coverups, if they can become millionaires, if they can improve the world, etc.. Evil is the justification of something that is widely perceived and understood to be bad.. Extremist muslims believe we should die for our sin, maybe we should, but its not up to them, its God's decision.. But it's justification for them to kill us (in their mind) because this is their perception of good.. Its really stupid and awful, but it does happen.. Christians can do it too.. Some Christians do too much in the name of some Christian saying, like "dieing for your friends is the best thing you can do", but if a Christian goes and straps bombs to her waist and blows up an abotion clinic, you think you will go to heaven for that anymore than a extremist muslim who believes its being a marter to go and send some perceived devils to hell to be sent to heaven to live with Mohammad?? What do you think? The only reason the terrorists that do this stuff thinks this way is an extreme perception of worry, they feel like this in the only way they can do what God wants them because.. Search your feelings.. I believe its people who think "they haven't done enough good that their lives are hopeless" so they go to the extreme end in a hope to save the world and elevate their significance.. Christ/God wroks through us in ways we can't perceive right? Abortion is wrong, but if you really believe in Christ you know what Christ said, and will know its wrong to act like a terrorist.. But the Muslims, what voice speaks against their acts other than what the bible says "we've known from the beginning what is right and wrong", don't be deceived by simple points, think it over..

I started out talking about Hollywood, this is where I ened, up.. Well Hollywood doesn't really have a soul, its soul is business these days. It will do whatever it can to make money, and its easy enough to call it a single thing, but we are really hollywood, we buy it, stop buying it, ask the library to stock it, watch it at the library, ha!

(6/1/05 6:25 AM): Real/Rhapsody are the soup nazis of CD burning, have you noticed how songs longer than 8 minutes or so tend not to be available for a burn.. That so much sucks its not even funny.. Especially considering all it burns is what's on your drive already, and the quality sucks enough you wouldn't want to play it on your car stereo.. 128Kbps.. Blech.. The song I was looking at burning was "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys".. I thought I'd burn some AOR songs for the 900 mile trip to San Antonio, but I guess I will have to buy CD's... The one time I would pay for a burn and Rhapsody blew it..

It must just be that song because all the yes albums seem to be burnable and you know how Yes songs are..

(6/1/05 5:48 AM): Guess who, no not the guess who, or the who, but its Steve Winwood with the Spencer Davis Group doing Gimme Some Lovin' (ies). Winwood, its all good. (r) I had heard he got kicked out of a London catholic school for playing blues on the pipe organ when the headmaster wasn't around.. Anyhow, so much for legend, he's excellent on the keyboards.. Steve sets the story straight (find: kicked out).. Ah..

(6/1/05 5:25 AM): I'm going to bed after this (ies)..

(6/1/05 4:44 AM): Caught in the Rhapsody vortex, this is not going to do me any good driving Thursday.. But I can't explain (v).. It must be something having to do with my generation (v).. Best just ask yourself (v) why I'm still awake..

(6/1/05 4:24 AM): Working late, before I go to visit my niece this weekend, I found out that the english beat on rhapsody had some realvideo streams.. Here is one (v).

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