It’s the Little Things

My Google Apps for Domains account finally has GMail themes! I love my GMail account (especially through GAD), but I was tired of seeing the plain old email interface. My main GMail account has had themes for quite some time now and I got used to them, so having it on my GAD accounts seals the deal.

OK, A Political Rant

I’m currently reading “The Soviet Tragedy”, I know it’s geeky, but interesting.  I came across an interesting passage that caught my eye.  The author is discussing the transition from Lenin to Stalin and how Stalin implemented a propaganda state to further the regime.  There is a quote from Lenin: “A newspaper is a collective agitator and a collective organizer.”  Stalin used this to create a rhetoric for culture.  A language was developed to serve this rhetoric – it was essential to the power and goals of the regime.  Language had to be politicized since it established the consciousness of the population.

The United States has done the same thing in recent years.  Efforts have been made to politicize the language that is used to effectively eliminate rational discourse.  Especially now, you look at terms like “liberal”, “conservative”, “socialist”, etc., they are so heavily politicized that it is difficult to carry out an honest discussion as to what is going on.  Certain plans are labeled “socialist” and it is said that we are going to become a socialist state if we continue down certain paths.  In many ways, we are a socialist society.  Many of the programs that have been enacted within the past century are for the betterment of the “common good” – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Food Stamps, Minimum Wage Laws, Labor Laws just to name a few.  The creation and implementation of unions can also be considered socialistic.

We are not a completely capitalist society as many would have you believe – just as we aren’t a wholly democratic society.

Have we really learned from history?  Can we start having open and honest discourse without the politicization of the language that we use?  Why can’t we be anti-abortion and pro-choice?  Can’t we understand that freedom of religion also means freedom from religion?

If we keep politicizing all of the language we will never address the underlying issues that face our society.

Just After Sunset

Stephen King

A series of short stories from the master himself.  This was a great part-time read… quick short stories that can be easily digested in just 30 minute bursts.  While not all the stories are “the best of the best”, every single one was entertaining.  I would highly recommend this book for any fans of fiction.

OK Go @ The TLA – 3/6/09

Andrew and I went to see OK Go last night at the TLA in Philly.  The opening acts were Oppenheimer and Longwave.  The show started a little before 9:00 with Oppenheimer taking the stage.  I had never heard of them before, they are a two-piece band from Dublin that plays short pop/synth songs.  The drummer does most of the singing and between-song banter.  They were high-energy and had some very catchy songs.  While I’m not a fan of the robotic sounding vocals, it fit in with the type of music they were playing.  For a first opening act, they did a fabulous job of warming up the audience… I will definitely sample some of their music online and possibly pick up one of their two releases.

After a short break while they reconfigured the stage, Longwave came on.  They were OK, I would say just “alright”.  Then they mentioned that their regular guitarist was not there due to the birth of his first baby and they got a friend to sit in on guitar all night.  It didn’t sound as if they were playing together for the first time… I may want to sample some of their stuff online as well – there was one in particular “Satellite” I believe that sounded really good – maybe with everyone present it would have been a better overall performance.  The strength of the band (like most in this genre) was the rhythm section.

Then OK Go came on and lit up the house.  They bring such a fabulous energy to their performances, they are a tremendous live band.  They have apparently been recording a new album and this show (the first on their tour) was going to be the big kick-off of that new album.  However, they haven’t finished the album yet.  They talked about not having enough lyrics for a complete album.

They started off with something slow and new – obviously I don’t know they names of their new stuff, but it was pretty good.  They played it again later with more guitar and accompaniment and it sounded phenomenal then.  Then they played “Get Over It” which really got the place rocking.  Damian Kulash (the lead singer) forgot some of the lyrics on this (one of their most famous songs) and later explained it as having never understood all of the old lyrics, he just had them memorized.  You could never tell that this was the first show in a long time from them, they were tight and running well.

They played about 6 new songs and I must say that I am VERY much looking forward to their new release, they all sounded great.  I’m not sure about the folk song they did at one point, but they didn’t say for sure that one is on the new release.

After a short break Damian came out and said that they were going to do something that no one has seen except for maybe at church.  We weren’t sure what to expect, but they put out a table and came out with a set of hand bells and played one of their slow songs on the bells.  They had the white gloves and all… it was oddly cool.

In my opinion, you can never go wrong seeing OK Go live.  They are a highly entertaining and spirited rock band with plenty of catchy pop rock songs to fill a show.  Again, as with most of the bands that I love, the rhythm section drives the band.  Not to say that the remainder of the band aren’t great, it is just a formula for this type of rock that works.  Have a kick-ass rhythm section and the foundation is there.  They sounded better than when I saw them two years ago at the same venue (they opened for Cheap Trick) – but that can be because they were the headliner this time around.

Overall, a very memorable and enjoyable evening.

Creative Frustration

I’ve been increasingly frustrated lately with my inability to find a creative outlet.  The desire is there… I want to write, I want to be creative… but the ability just isn’t there.

I don’t think this was a big problem in the past since I was able to be creative in my developmental endeavors.  Coming up with solutions to complex technical issues and developing tools to assist in the process was a creative outlet.  My new job, however, is lacking this creativity.  Not that I dislike my current job, I actually like it quite a bit, I think I am just now having to find that creative outlet in other areas… and it has been a struggle.

One other possibility is that I haven’t been attending school the past year.  For quite some time I was taking a class or two at a time.  The assignments allowed for some level of creative output.  I’ve been out of school mode for over a year now, so maybe it’s a combination of these two items.

Updated Music Library Stats

Now that I’ve completed the ripping process, I’ve been able to go through and eliminate some of the duplicates and do some general cleanup.  Here are the updated statistics on my music collection:

 

Artists 2505
Albums 3463
Genres 44
Years 55
Playlists 18
Tracks 38747
Length (h:mm:ss) 2908:25:03
File size 233.84 GB

Baseball and Steroids

With all of the talk going on about baseball and steroids, I feel a need to express my opinion.

There is and always will be one person responsible for taking steroids and that is the player.  Everyone keeps wanting to say that it’s the league’s fault, it the owner’s fault, it’s the union’s fault… that’s a bunch of crap.  Unless players were strapped down to tables and forced to take injections, the fault falls no further than the player.

A player must make a conscious decision to take a performance enhancing substance… it’s not something you accidentally do.

Did the league and union screw up by not testing it for drugs appropriately?  Most definitely.  It is just silly though to turn that into it being the league’s fault for not having rules preventing cheating.  If you gave any of the cheaters truth serum, they would all admit that they were cheating and looking for an unnatural competitive advantage – there are no two ways about it.

Just because there are no laws on the books saying that I am not explicitly allowed to drill a hole in my head, that doesn’t give me the go-ahead to do it.  If I go and do it, can I then blame the government for not preventing me from doing it?

The fault for taking steroids falls squarely with the players.  The fault for allowing it to become such a widespread problem – everyone (mostly the players and the union).

Ubuntu Working Well on Laptop

My “old” laptop feels new again.  Ubuntu has given it new life.  I’ve been trying my best to use it for anything that I don’t explicitly need Windows for and the list is growing.  I’m using it right now making my posts while I’m listening to music from my library.

I got Banshee working for library management and I mounted the server locally using smbmount so that I could access the music and pictures as if they existed directly on the laptop.  That seems to be the ticket.  I got Picasa up and running managing the pictures right from the mount point and banshee was able to import my music library and that is all working well.

I tried plugging my iPod Shuffle in and it showed up on my desktop, however, for some unknown reason, it’s not appearing in Banshee.  I’ll have to look at this because it would be nice to be able to manage the iPods from this laptop as well.  For the time being, it’s no big deal as I’m able to work with the iPods from my primary laptop which is running Windows Vista.