Day After Yesterday

harper hit me with this video. It must be so awesome, but I don’t have the balls. Or I have too much self preservation. Kind of a fine line.

Check out the baby blog for all the details…

I love nokia phones. I really like the symbian OS too. I think I just like the concept of an OS where I can install apps and whatnot and do whatever. Oh, and it isn’t an MS OS, which I won’t do. So I have a nokia. My wife has a nokia. My kid has my on of our old nokias as a toy. My mom has one. My sister has one. I tell everyone that they need nokias. When people who bought RAZR’s finally get fed up with that piece of crap phone, I tell them to go nokia.

So when the iPhone was announced I was conflicted. I also love apple. But the whole lack of installable software pissed me off to a degree that I knew I wasn’t going actually get one. I took the money and bought car parts and bike parts instead.

As the iPhone hit the market and I got more into it, there was a tinge of desire there I will admit, but then I remembered, while I sat on the can playing solitaire on my nokia, that I could do that on an iPhone, but I would have to be hitting a web page. Meh.

Then I got this link today, and I found it really funny. And really the points are all valid. Sure, it is a bit over the top, it is all valid. And really pretty in line with my feelings and thoughts. Sure, he does better animated GIFs than I do, but I am ok with that.

So I am sure I have mentioned this to anyone I have spoke with in the last 6 months, but I love mashups. LOVE. It gets funny when I go somewhere and I hear an original, not the mashup, and I am all confused because the song is all wrong. My current listen is this Iron Maiden Mashup Album from Celebrity Murder Party that I got word of from Mashuptown. It has the Call Me Phantom track that I was jonesing over the last couple weeks. I mean, I still think the Party Ben stuff is better overall, but CMP is good too. It is fun to have the more metal angle though versus the more dance stuff.

I hate Jerry Falwell. Not that I am going out on a crazy limb to say that, but yeah. Needless to say, while I don’t usually cheer when people die, we are better off without him. Hatred is hatred, regardless of what ‘religion’ you are hiding behind. While I am an atheist, I respect the right people have to free speech and religious beliefs. My stance is I won’t tell you my beliefs and you don’t tell me yours.

But overall, I think he was incredibly negative. Glad to see him gone. I hope his flock of fools wanders away and realizes that they have been led around by a bigot.

Here is a list of great quotes from Jerry.

I have a smart playlist in iTunes of the above name, and it is staggering how many songs are in there. Insane. Sure, some of them are older CDs that I own that I surely played the hell out of in high school, so the iTunes play count is a poor representation of my history with those songs, but there are a lot of newer things on there.

The problem is of course caused by the very thing that makes me love digital music as I do-instant gratification. To sit here at my laptop and think, DAMN, I want to listen to that one Guided By Voices song, it will be playing within 15 seconds. Combine that with the fact that I don’t spend NEARLY the amount of time in my car I that I used to, and I don’t listen to music in the same way anymore.

Back in the pre-MP3 days, I would load the car up with CDs. In high school, I used to drive around with a minimum of 100 cds in the car, in wooden crates in the back seat, in the door pockets, center console, glove box. CDs were everywhere. It was a major auto theft waiting to happen. Not that the average thief would have much to do with local chicago punk CDs and random imported ska CDs, but nonetheless, it would have sucked for me.

But once I moved everything to MP3s and got the ubiquitous iPod (first on the block, waiting in line at the Apple Store that saturday morning for my (now) huge 5GB iPod. Still works quite well thank you.) everything changed. I hardwired a firewire plug behind the dash board, I wired the iPod into the CD Changer inputs of the Audi headunit. and built a fancy little holder for it.

And thus the instant gratification began. And the death of the album per se. I like the concept of an album, I think the order of tracks is important. But I don’t care anymore. I don’t listen to anything in order anymore. I usually have whatever I am listening to on shuffle. I am not ready to bring the album back, but I am working on listening to music as I get it, giving things a fair few times before it falls into the vast library. There have been a number of songs that I REALLY like now, but would have never found on the first pass.

So my current plan is to get everything to a play count of at the least 1. And I am seriously listening to them. I am filling the iPods off those playlists and syncing them back. I am down to ~1400 songs left. I am also trying to not add as much music at the rate I usually do. I am deleting things I don’t care about in an attempt to both clear up space and also get rid of the crap. I don’t know why I had so much Jennifer Lopez, but that is all gone now, needless to say. I am have an ‘on deck’ folder with MP3s that I will add once I listen to the album I last added.

I am getting lazy with music due to the potential floodgate that I could open at any time. I need to give more attention to what I have and digest it all versus slamming it all down. I need to rediscover my music.

So I somehow managed to tweak my back monday AM… getting into the camry of all things. Kinda odd. So I skipped the gym on monday, and I have been laying low since then, being nice to my back, lifting with my knees, etc.

The odd thing is that it doesn’t always hurt, just sometimes. And sometimes I will forget for hours that it is weird, then I’ll do something weird. Makes me think I just tweaked a muscle. Grr.

I have been hyper aware of such things since Lisa screwed up her back, that is scary… so I am trying to be careful.

I am feeling good…. yesterday… mason had a doctor’s appt, the work, then came home, got mason to bed, had dinner, went to the gym, then went to the grocery store and got normal stuff as well as stuff for smoothies, veggies, and stuff for work lunches. Made some veggies stir fried for a post gym snack, cleaned up the main floor, and went to bed.

This AM I got up, made smoothies, fed mason, and was at work at 9.

I like eating lunch in, since I don’t really care about the food options around me, and damn is it hard to eat a decent meal out that is remotely healthy. I mean, au ba pon (sp?) has low calories, but like 50% of the daily sodium. ok. Subway 6inch veggie patty is ok. The tofu teriyaki is good, but I can only eat that so much. Not to mention all of those cost $4-$6. So I have been making pb&j sandwiches and eating some fruit. I figure that is better, and infinitely cheaper, even when I am using whole wheat bread, real peanut butter (list of ingredients: peanuts. thats it.), and fruit spread (it is hard to find a jelly/jam/preserve that doesn’t have corn syrup in it).

So yeah, I figure that is better than what I was eating.

Work, tonight is garage. Maybe I’ll work on the car? who knows.

Thanks to josh for this link…

Scary Voting Facts in the US

So I got chipotle tonight… and they have a calendar for sale for 2007… and on it says something to the effect of:

2007 …and still no flying cars

that rules. although I am not sure I like chipotle as much anymore. It is good, but it isn’t as healthy as I would like, and I am trying to eat healthier food lately.