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Which is something I’ve become somewhat of an expert on.  I’ve been down sick for a good week now, and my doctor has confirmed a trendy case of mono (I feel like I’m in high school).  So blogging will take place between bouts of sleeping and napping and cursing.

What I have learned so far is that….

• Daytime TV sucks….no seriously, it’s awful.  Much more of this and I’ll end up watching soaps out of desperation
• Most of the internet sucks…no seriously, it’s awful.  And it’s completely possible to exhaust the cool parts of it
• When I was in HS mono earned you coolness points….those points were well deserved, this sucks.
• Perpetually napping makes daytime TV even worse….since everything is a repeat of what was broadcast about two hours ago.
• Considering the number of channels my dish gets, this degree of suckitude doesn’t seem mathematically possible.

I’m tempted to liveblog my napping schedule for tomorrow but that sounds like too much work.

“Friggin Awesome” would probably be the best phrase to describe….

First the peripherals….

The cover band was Dividing Ashes or something…I dunno. Was not impressed. Prof. Rackmaster probably summed up their performance best by describing their play as “it sounded like each of them were playing a different song”. Nothing catchy, they were just…..there. And filled time until STP took the stage…which is about all an opening band does I guess.

Oh and note to Roy Wilkens Auditorium. When hosting a concert for a band whose core audience is probably about a decade above the age of 21….well, it’s probably in your best interest to make sure all your beer taps work, and two beer vendors in the lobby area? Not enough…

But then STP took the stage….and all was good.

First I’ll deal with requested information. Learned Foot wanted me to report which drug(s) Scott Weiland was taking for tonite’s performance. The answer to that question is likely “Yes”. Oh he’s an entertaining figure to be sure but was in fine form for the concert. From just randomly wandering out into the crowd at one point to slowly stripping over the course of the night to climbing speaker stacks to grabbing feather boas out of the crowd to play with. Interesting sound effect was created by singing into the microphone via a megaphone. And it appears that the insurance company was probably a little worried about poor ol’ Scott. Some security type person was damn near attached to him at the hip the entire concert and several times appeared as if he was going to intervene if Weiland did anything stupid.

Most of the songs were their earlier songs which was kinda nice. Their sound has evolved over the years and I always liked their earlier stuff better. The later songs were more mellow and “radio friendly”. I think most of the entire “Core” album was played. And the crowd knew the lyrics to damn near every song. Speaking of the crowd I found myself at probably the younger age scale of the audience, which was kinda nice. Meant the crowd wasn’t just some younger kids who just heard of them. There were some younger fans, located down on the floor in the mosh pit.

Good times were had by all. Hopefully this reunion isn’t just for the sake of a tour and we can get some new music out of the group. Of course, that requires Weiland to stay out of jail and/or rehab. Odds are minimal.

Some photos by some guy can be found here. Strib review of concert here.

Yup it’s my birthday today….yeah for me. Today I turn 29 for the first time, and if I get my way, I’ll remain 29 for probably the next 16 years or so. Just not ready for that 30 thing.

So yeah, I’m off now to enjoy the festivities. It’s your job to keep this blog alive for a couple days by telling me how wonderful I am.

You may begin….

NOTE : Oh and this is my 2000th published post!

And this stuff is legal in all 50 states….and it costs $160 for about 20 lbs of it….

So, my birthday is in June, anyone want to buy me an early present??

Kevin is being sent on temporary assignment to northern Minnesota to study this think called “Global Warming”. The study mostly consists of the Minnesota Militia traversing hundreds of miles of snow looking for signs of this mysterious phenomena.

Five Sleds? Check.

Five riders? Check.

Muffpots? Check.

Kidney Belts? Check.

Beer? Check. Check. Check. Check. Check.

Snow? Check.

Open Trails? Check.

Willingness to have a freaking blast? Check.

Alright, let’s go out and check out this global warming thing. If I’m not back by Monday, wait longer….I setup a bunch of posts to auto-publish, so you shouldn’t miss me at all, not that you really would.

Allow me a few paragraphs to whine for a moment. If it helps, you can laugh at my misery….or share in my pain. Whatever tickles your fancy.

So Vista arrived on my machine. I’m disgruntled but fine I’ll deal with it. Until I learn I simply can not get the day thing to read a mapped network drive. I can map it. It can see the files in the directory. But it can’t open ANY thing. Frustrating? Yeah. Especially when all three of the other PCs on my home network can access it just fine…..running Windows 2K, XP and 98 (don’t ask). Proof that Vista sucks worse than all previous Windows products….which in itself is like a Hall of Fame of Suck.

Fine whatever, I’m sure it’s a problem with a setting. Glance around the web reveals little more than other people complaining about the same thing. Fine. This has to be an easy question for support right?? I mean this is a VERY basic function for a modern OS.

Look at the support page. Ohhhh, look, their support center is open for another hour, I can still call them. Answering machine says they are closed. Um, no you’re not a-holes.

Ok look I can email a tech?!? Great, I’ll email, go to bed and in the morning technological greatness will be in my inbox. Yeah! Click on the option to send an email to technical support. I have to enter my Product ID to verify I’m within the 90-day free support period?? Sure, no problem….I just took this thing out of the box today afterall. Punch it in and get an error message, indicating it’s an invalid ID number….and no way to contest that yes it is valid you dumbasses.

Wow….so now I have an expensive machine with a crappy OS that isn’t supported. And while I see that I can get XP via my employer for $65, do I really want to give MORE money to the same company that has already screwed me over?

And Microsoft wonders why it has a poor reputation.

“Moral” of this story : Vista sucks. Microsoft sucks. I wonder if there are any good games on Linux?

UPDATE : After letting three different support persons take a crack at this issue the end result is that they confirmed the topic of this post. Best advice offered? “Wait and see if Service Pack 1 fixes this issue”. Sorry, no will do. Time to reformat the drive and install a different OS. And then make a pledge to never try another Microsoft operating system until after SP8.

Well my new computer just arrived at EckerNet.Com HQ today, and it’s setup and running right now. Very nice.

22-inch monitor
1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor 1066MHz FSB 4MB cache
4 GB DDR2 (although thanks to 32-bit OS can only use 3.2 of it)
NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT 512MB
Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
500 GB HD

The downside??? It’s running Windows Vista

God almighty….once again I think Microsoft let the kids loose with the crayons in their operating system. Even worse I can’t find a damn thing. But sure as hell Windows thinks it knows what I want cause it’s just as pushy as that damn dancing paperclip. And then when I do find what I want to do, damn thing has to ask for permission to perform the action about 23 times.

If it weren’t for games, Linux would be looking awfully good right now.

I wonder how much XP is selling for these days?

UPDATE : Wow….lots of new stuff in Vista.  I’m especially liking this new feature that makes applications just randomly lock up.  And not just the annoying lockup, but the type of lock up where you have to physically unplug the computer in order to restart it.

Which is especially fun when trying to figure out why Windows is completely unable to access mapped network drives.

Wow….

Did you ever fill a model airplane with a couple of tubes of airplane glue, strap an Estes rocket engine to the back, and then light the engine?

The model airplane would shoot wildly across the ground, and then the parachute charge would ignite the whole thing in a great big ball of fire.

Talk about pyronostalgia!

Ok, now I never did that actual act, however, we did do something fairly similar. I remember when I was younger (say 12 years old?), myself and a friend of mine, occasionally went out to his grandparents lake home, where we were left to amuse ourselves. Amongst other activities that the Fifth Amendment suggests I not mention, we did partake in the nautical equivalent.

His mother was a bit of an antique collector, he’d get dragged along quite often. On the plus side, she often let him buy old plastic models of ships and such. We’d then spend a great deal of time taking them apart and filling them with highly flammable materials and strategically placed fireworks, then putting them back together. When night came they’d be cast afloat…after lighting the necessary fuses.

The end result being and entire fleet of ships in various stages of pyrotechnics floating across the lake*. You could almost see the U-Boat sulking off, content in it’s prize.

* It now occurs to my (barely) adult mind that it’s surprising no ACTUAL boats came upon our fleet. Although there was seldom boat traffic on this very very shallow lake, and as a result few waves to topple our very top heavy creations.

NOTE : Yeah, I was burning plastic…contributing to global warming. I know, the entire ecosystem was thrown out of wack. Go suck tofu.

Yeah…so remember when I left most of last week to go hunting??? Well I’m gonna do it again. Each of the MN Militia has been dispersed to the far corners of the state to seek out Bambi….or preferably his elder kin.

So I’ll leave you all to wallow in another Vikings loss, the latest gossip about Britney Spears and/or the latest dumbass idea our politicians came up with. Good luck!

If anyone is looking for me, tell them to wait. If I’m not back in a few days, wait longer.

UPDATE : Well I’m back and it was another wonderful hunt. To be honest I had VERY low expectations going into this year. We were down to five hunters, we had no doe licenses, land disputes had reduced the amount of land we had access to, and the local coyote population had basically wiped out all of this springs fawns.

However, despite not having the tags to shoot them I think the entire weekend was one big long highlight reel of beautiful shooting opportunities. They were just all chances on does…which I didn’t have a permit for.

Early Sunday morning I did have a chance at a buck. While hunkered down in the tree line, I heard something coming up behind me. Soon enough, a very large doe was standing next to me less than 10 feet away. I could see from shadows on the ground there were two more deer behind her. But she knew something was up, the wind was not in her favor so I think she heard my breathing….or my heart. Either way she spooked and ran 20 yards and then stood broadside to me. As did the two behind her…turned out to be another doe, although very small. And a fork-horn buck, also very small. All broadside to me at 20 yards. They even permitted me to stand up and bring the gun to my shoulder. Although I passed on the opportunity.

I got a slight amount of razing for it but I’m happy with my decision. From my point of few. It was a small buck, I’m inclined to wait for a larger one. Plus I had his mother and sister as a backdrop…which for a point blank shot, sure as hell my slug would rip right through him. Plus despite his small size he already had a fork-horn, which to me says he’s got good genetics. I’m inclined to let him breed next year and spread those genes. Assuming he makes it to next year….which considering his practice of presenting a broadside target at short-range to a hunter he knows is there, is somewhat in doubt.

In the end I had to settle for tag-teaming a nice 9-point buck with my father. And the tag team was definitely needed, as this damn thing was the toughest SOB I’ve ever seen. I’ll save you the gory details, but my respect for the whitetails resilience and constitution went up a couple notches this weekend.

Ok so in the very immediate future, I plan on having the following things replace on my house siding, roof, fascia, gutters, etc.  I figured, hmmm, probably a good time to do windows too yeah?  And since I’m doing the siding as well, I can do new construction windows too! Great, they seal up better, it’s a whole new frame the whole works.

Call a few people in, they quote me prices.  I laugh at them and kick them out.  I call a few more people in, I laugh at most of them, one of them I like.  Oh joy!  Until the phone call today.

Yeah, turns out new construction isn’t gonna work.  See front of my house is the four windows for the four bedrooms.  Upper bedrooms have 30×46 and lower have 30×36 inch windows, all of them sliders.  My original plan would be put in new construction windows, sliders, and then do a happy dance because new windows are worth that…or at least they should be with as much as the frigging things cost!

Small problem though apparently as Minnesota, the state where nothing is allowed, intervened.  Apparently there is a rule, that for bedrooms you need to have egress windows.  Which are defined as having an openable area 5.7 square feet, with a minimum of 20 inches width and 24 inches height.  Unfortunately, sliders or double-hung, you’re cutting the window in half one direction so my windows no longer qualify.

Come on people, my house doesn’t have that now!!  I’m trying to make improvements here (read: higher property value (read: higher taxes (read: more money for you jackasses to spend))), to hell with your silly rules!!   And honestly, let’s examine this law.  Ok I understand the need for feel-good legislation, but I’m afraid I have to revoke the need for this on the grounds of stupiditititty*.

Have you visited the American public lately?? Tell you what, let’s go into a restaurant, or a store, any one, you name the place.  Now are you telling me even half of the people in that place would fit through a 21 inch opening??  Yeah, I thought so.  If you’re gonna go and declare sizes like this with the interest of saving lives, you may as well dictate that every house needs a friggin garage door on the side of every bedroom.

Grumble grumble grumble.  Okay I’m only slightly annoyed at this point.  Then the magical windows guys try to cheer me up by telling me all is not lost.  If I just do replacement windows instead, the laws no longer apply.

WHAT?!?  So the state is only interested in saving the life of people who put in new construction windows?? If your focus is to try to make houses safe in a fire, isn’t that a rather stupid loophole.  I understand it’s probably not a loophole, it was probably meant to only apply to newly constructed houses, and you’re letting existing houses get by on the old rules….except you f-ed it up.  Your loophole sucks.  And NO I am no encouraging you to close said loophole (because I’m gonna have to use it!).  But it just further cements the fact that there was really no good reason for this rule to begin with, other than to annoy me and generally force me to write a rather rambling and idiotic post to compensate for the fact that I didn’t really feel like bitching about immigration tonite and didn’t have the heart to giggle at Vick.

* Yes this is a word I just made up but I like it.  Originally it was just a mistype, but then I noticed it had “titty” in it so I’m keeping it.  You don’t like it? Tough.