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A coworker just bought himself a brand new Nissan Skyline GT-R – it’s sitting out in the parking lot right now.  The Skyline was re-introduced to the US market this year after a long hiatus.   In their day, they were considered one of the best street legal cars made; and if reviews are to be believed – this version is even better.  The new versions currently run about $75-80,000; and if you’re the first to buy one at a dealership – they’ll try to stick you with a $20,000 ‘retooling’ fee so their shop can maintain it according to specs. (yes, he got this exact grey color)

I actually, seriously, looked into buying one of these the last car purchase, but just couldn’t justify it.  However, to give you an idea of how amazing these cars are for the price, $80,000 will buy you a car that beat every single porche, lambo, and all but 4 other super-cars reviewed on Top Gear by their professional driver.  These cars are simply that amazing.  And they don’t even stand out gaudily in traffic.  They just look awesome.  As a friend put it: “They look like they’ll steal your lunch money – and you’ll happily give it to them.” My hope is that in a few years I can pick up a used one of these for a considerably more reasonable price.

My hat is off to you Marty – you lucky, lucky b@stard.

Well, it’s a bit late for the latest round of voting, but we got into a conversation at work on how Catholics vote.  Contrary to popular belief, there is no ‘vote for this guy  don’t vote for this guy’ list that we all get.  Quite the contrary in fact.  Instead, it’s the duty of the local parish+priest to teach the relevant principles of the faith, and then require each of us to apply those principles ourselves.  There is not to be any mindless following (as many love to claim).

Our bishop simply pointed to the US Catholic Bishop’s article on faithful citizenship.  It’s a very good document that is worth the read if your curious – and good for Catholics to get a good brush up on what principles you’re supposed to be following.  If you’re not interested in all the background – just shoot to the principles on page 12/13 for the basic idea.

Some interesting bits:

1. The Catholic Church does not endorse candidates nor ballot measures as a policy.  Bishops, priests, and church leaders are not to directly promote or discourage voting for any particular candidates or issues from the pulpit or privately.  They’re primary duty is to teach and comment on the principles of our faith relating to the issues, but it is up to the individual’s Catholic’s well informed conscience to choose candidates and measures.
2. Voting your conscience isn’t just a gut-feeling.  It involves going out and becoming well informed on Catholic teaching, current state of the matter/society, and careful reading about the actual candidate/issue.   Then, doctrinal (church teaching) and scriptural research about the matter is to be preformed.  Finally, after careful prayer and quietly ‘sitting with God’ in prayer to receptively listen to His guidance with all this information about the issue, one forms an course of action.
3. Catholics are not to be single-issue voters.  They are also to see beyond any partisan politics and vote on the best candidate based on the issues of the day and what their faith and conscience tell them. Catholics are not Democrats nor Republicans – but faithful citizens that will vote for the best candidate.
4. Due to our particular political situation – one might be able to vote for a pro-abortion candidate in certain cases – but only if they are not voting for the candidate for the purpose of promoting pro-abortion policies (and a few other conditions are met – definitely see the fine print for hows and whys in the document for details – it’s not a blanket clause).

Anyway, there’s some really great stuff in there, and it references all the documents they came from in case you want to read more.

Wow!  Wow!  Wow! (videos are at the bottom of this entry)

   

What an amazing concert.  I was having flashbacks to my teen years to when I would listen to Metallica with friends on our way to farm jobs.  Never would I have thought that 15 years later, I would be close enough to read their tattoos.  My ears are still ringing!

The Good:

• Second row aisle seat – so close I could read their tattoos – epic! (all for $65!) Could..almost…touch…the gods of rock…
• It was Metallica as you’ve always known them.  About half the songs they played were classics – and they played them really well. So well done that I pulled out my old CD’s to listen to them again.  Here’s the set list:
  01. That Was Just Your Life
  02. The End Of The Line
  03. For Whom The Bell Tolls
  04. Ride The Lightning
  05. One
  06. Broken, Beat And Scarred
  07. Cyanide
  08. Sad But True
  09. …And Justice For All
  10. No Remorse
  11. The Day That Never Comes
  12. Master Of Puppets
  13. Fight Fire With Fire
  14. Nothing Else Matters
  15. Enter Sandman
  – – -Encore- – – – –
  16. Last Caress
  17. Stone Cold Crazy
  19. Seek and Destroy
• Energy of the concert was amazing – crowd was great, fire effects were great, lighting and stage was really well done.
• Next day you can download your show! – Go here to download all the individual mp3’s of any concert for $10
• No ‘front’ stage – they all moved around the stage and played at different locations.  So there wasn’t a bad front seat anywhere in the front – very well executed, even had a rotating drum set.  I had each of the band members right in front of me at one point.
• Surrounded by VIPs – I think the reason I got my amazing ticket was it was an unused VIP ticket that opened at noon the day before the concert.  I was surrounded by people with VIP and ‘band pass’ badges. Was that just Hetfield’s wife I saw?  No, really…

The Ugly:  Crowd control – the two guards in charge of our section fail miserably.

• There was a small mosh/GA area below stage level in front of us.  About 1/2 way through the concert in a 5 minute span, about 5-10 people started individually rushing and jumping the fence in our section.  It got bad enough at one point I really feared a general rush/riot might be coming.  People were tackled by guards, idiots refused to take being thrown out like men.  Fortunately the staff popped over with a bunch of bouncers and got things under control – but it ruined two songs while the local theatrics were attended to.

The Priceless:

• 2 old rockers that were clearly not all there (about 40-50, and looked like Ozzie clones) decided to light up huge blunties – only 2 seconds later to realize they were standing right by the guards.  Bye bye guys. 🙂
• The lower mosh/GA area – the most violent offender award goes to a girl in 80’s pink shorts and yellow tank top.  Man, guards had to come in twice and calm her down.
• Friend of mine was up in 300 level – and when a guy got caught toking up, instead of getting caught – flicked the bluntie over the wall to the crowd below.  Somebody down below either got an early christmas present, or a roach burn. 🙂
• The fellows that jumped the railing, then got owned by the mosh guards.

The Awesome:
Wanna see how a concert is from the front?  Here’s clips from a guy using camera video that was sitting right near me.  I gave him my email and he was good enough to give me copies.  Thanks man!

For Whom the Bell Tolls:

Ride the Lightning:

One:

Nothing Else Matters:

(Movies are AVI)

Due to a completely random turn of luck and strange turns, I just got a single 2nd row ticket to Metallica’s show tomorrow – and at face value of $65.  I had been on and off watching craigslist for a deal, but narry were they to be found.  Scalpers were trying to get $100’s for even not-so-great tickets. Fortunately, I didn’t have to mess with the risks of fake tickets or flaky craigslist sellers at all.   This marks two concerts now that I’ve gotten amazing tickets for less or at face value (first was 10th row Police tickets).

Appears, now that I look at craigslist, that the economy is taking its bite there too.  A lot of the scalpers are now selling at quite a bit below what they were asking a few weeks ago…

Never-the-less – off to the show!

I returned home late last night and had a mysterious FedEx box on my door.  I hadn’t remembered ordering anything so when I opened it up – I was pleasantly surprised by my free 8gb iPod Touch had arrived!

I had signed up for Key Bank’s free iPod with the opening of a new account about 3 months ago.  Deal was, if you opened a business account by making the initial required opening deposit and keep the account in good standing for 3 months (meaning: 2 automated payroll deposits and 1 ATM card use), you got a free iPod Touch.  Well, my 3rd month wasn’t supposed to end until Oct 30th, but it looks like they went by opening date instead.

Few impressions:

1. The thing instantly gets finger-printy and the back scratches just by looking at it.  You find yourself cleaning it a lot.  Looks like a protector of some sort will be required.
2. I don’t really like iTunes.
   1. Friggen slow – why is the iTunes interface so slow.  I can only take 15 minute doses then go do something else.  Browsing is a pain due to speed.
   2. No no no!  Why do I have to enter a credit card number just to use my iTouch???  I couldn’t use my iTouch without the iTunes software.  I can’t install iTunes without an account on the store.  I can’t create an account on the store without a credit card number.  So, I can’t use my iTouch device without giving Apple my credit card number.  I don’t like that.  There is no reason for them to need that.  I can’t even just browse around for free or just use my device.  That’s not cool with me.  I’m looking for alternatives software now.
   3. Getting existing music on the iTouch is a pain. All I wanted to do was drop my existing mp3 collection onto the device, and it took me a long time to figure out how (you have to add your music to the ‘library’ then you can click and drag).  I have my music ripped to mp3’s – and arranged in folders by artist/album.  When you drop it into iTunes – it looses all that sorting.  Some of my mp3’s didn’t get artist/album/album art info on it.  So now I have to either enter that myself for all my songs, or just live with lost of ‘unknown artist’.  My iRiver is just a usb stick that I plug in and drag and drop files.  Thats what I want.
   4. App store works good.  I like the app store – some really great free stuff in there.  I already have an idea for 2 apps I want to write.  I’m downloading the SDK right now…
      1. Pandora is worth the price of admission alone.  If you can find free wireless, you have free streaming internet radio.
      2. A good number of the apps are pretty mediocre/low quality right now. There is a lot of untapped potential.
      3. None of calculators are very good – overly nerdy or not feature rich.  Shesh – this should be easy to fix…
      4. Conversion tools,
3. Sync works pretty well – just plug in and sync.  Not so sure about the ‘register my computer’ bits though.  At least you can unregister easily.
4. Free is the right price:  I wouldn’t have paid $225 for this device.  There are simply too many other good mp3 players out there for 1/4 the price.  That and I usually use my mp3 player for exercising – and the touch is too big (and too nice) for that.
5. Podcast subscription features are nicely integrated.
6. Internet anywhere ROCKS. Yes – this thing does great with picking up and using wireless networks. I think I’m going to be bringing this with me a lot of different places…

Well well.  Have you ever sold a car, then saw it again?  I just did.

I was driving back home on Saturday, and saw a familiar car.  It only took a second to realize it was my old 93 Nissan Altima that I had sold a fellow a few months ago.  In Oregon, the plates go with the car – so I knew for 100% sure it was my old car.  Outside of looking like it needed a good bath – it looked exactly the same and running great.  I had to turn off for my stop – but for about 3-4 miles – I got to follow the car that served me so well for 10 years.  Appears to be serving the next guy just as well.

How about you?  Ever see your old car or other item that you sold in someone elses hands – even years later?

My mom is a big bunny person – owning lots herself.  Last Christmas I got her a Bunnie Suicides book as a prank gift.  It was good for a chuckle or two – nothing too stupendous or earth-shattering really.  Or so I thought.  Apparently, however, this Oregon mom doesn’t see the humor:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/10/ore_mom_wont_return_bunny_suic.html

After a bad week of destroyed bathrooms, cars getting hit and just general crunch time at work – things are beginning to sort themselves out.

1. Shower is fixed – and I got a entire apartment cleaning free out of it due to the dust, destruction, and whatnot.  That was nice and I can shower at home again.

2. The broken bathroom really lit my workout schedule – Since I had to shower at work, I decided to go running 5k on the treadmill every day before getting the requisite hosing down.  I went running every night for 2 solid weeks now – and it feels great!

3.  Car is getting fixed – dropped off my car this morning for the requisite repair work.  Got a mid-sized pickup as a rental (!?).  I’m using a repair place out here by work (Hillsboro) because they were cheaper and got good recommendations.   I guess you know you’re renting out in farm country when the only cars they had available were minivans and mid-size pickups.  At least it wasn’t an SUV.  I would have revolted on that one…

But, got the floor pulled out from under our project at work so there is a huge re-scrambling of priorities and WTF’s kind of blowing around.  I was actually looking forward to this bit of coding, but now it appears it is not to be.  Now to scramble around for another project to work on…

There is a funny (and not always SFW) site called bash.org that you can submit bits of quotes from instant message sessions and people vote for their funniness quotient.  Well, one of my dreams was lived when my joke hit 1000 votes – which is considered quite high. Top 200 of all time is at about 5000 votes.  It was part of a real conversation I was having. Enjoy it here (sfw)

or just read it here…

#715525 +(1044)- [X]

Matt-0375> hear about the people getting sore from playing the wii controllers?
thx-1192> Yeah, fatasses should get up and move more often
Matt-0375> I’m just waiting for the headlines: “why does it burn when you wii?”

What a week so far:
-Last Saturday: landlady reports the bathroom in the apartment below me just had her ceiling bow, then collapse.  There’s a leak of some sort.  No using shower until Monday when the plumber arrives and confirms the pipes are ok.  Tiler comes on Tuesday and confirms that the tiling was leaking.  Proceeds to rip the wall out and then put a dehumidifier in my bathroom.  So,  I get to shower at work every morning.  1 week later – still drying the wall out – at least 2 more days before I get a shower at home.  Sigh.

-Tuesday: electric shaver dies, get to go to work looking shabby AND stinky

-Thursday: battery in car dies – need to get a jump from cab company in the middle of the night.  Get up super-early next morning to go get another battery and old one is confirmed dead.

-Saturday: while parked outside a cafe – a lady mashes the front of my car.  I wasn’t there, but she did leave a note with a policy number.  Car is still drivable, but now I need to get at least my whole front bumper replaced and one headlight.  more sigh.

So, how did all your week go?