Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Last Minute Details & The House of the Rising Blogger

It would have been a bit easier and a lot less harried if I had some time off prior to my other half's visit to NYC; instead, I've been juggling a lot of little stuff and simultaneously keeping my fingers in the holes in the dyke (what imagery that invokes) while everything else keeps rolling right along.

And then, as if by magic, I went to submit a new post to the HoB and, sho'nuff, Blogspot was down, which meant, instead of addressing the other items on my ever-expanding to-do list, I wound up skinning the cat (my apologies to feral cat lovers, as well as to those of you who love feral cats). In essence, trying to use brute force to get a post through and up idn't the way to go. As Dicky V (or was it Magellan?) once said, it's all about finesse, baby. Come to think of it, it was actually Brian Boitano. Nevermind.

So in the meantime, I've been trying to address everything: my apartment, some personal work, the last of the tax stuff, a few call-backs that never happened, some info for a friend who is in and out of Bangkok, an hour or two of update work for a client in my building, the sign-up sheet for a "pick-up" hockey league starting in late May that keeps calling to me; and the best part, getting everything packed and ready to swing by the W tomorrow evening/night to, finally, spend some time with my other half.

Unfortunately, my to-do list started expanding faster than Dom DeLuise's waistline at an all-you-can-eat buffet, and things -- like my laundry -- started piling up. On top of that, my grandmother has a procedure on Friday and my mom is heading out to the Land of Snow to be with her throughout the day or two she'll be "recovering." As I indicated in a prior post herein, she shares the same birthday as the recently-deceased Pope. She's also sweet like the Pope, but that's about the only similarity, however, as she rarely wears funny hats and she doesn't speak Italian unless she's ordering.

Also, sometime this weekend I need to swing by a site called Tubesville; the proprietor of the site, Blackie Pagano, is the tech wizard behind Tigerman Amps, and a friend of mine, knowing I've been using -- what else -- MesaBoogie amps, stacks and heads for a number of years, told me to check it out and maybe swing by his place near Katz's Deli this weekend. I'm not sure if we're going to have time (or the inclination) to swing by this weekend, and I highly doubt Katz's will be on our culinary "must-see" list, but I'm looking forward to seeing Blackie's stuff, both online and in person. If you have a tube amp and you need to replace, repair or augment it, Blackie is the guy to see. Odds are I'll either bring my Strat or a friend's Les Paul to his shop and give his stuff a whirl; but not only does he do guitar/bass amps, he does standard receivers and other tech work for (custom) home systems, both multi-channel and singles as well. And lately he's been doing a lot of custom iPod-related stuff; home docking and networking, multi-room Podcasts, speaker cabinets, docks, and I've heard rumors -- mebbe nothing more, perhaps nothing less than rumors -- that he's working on an in-wall dock that allows you to slide an iPod into the wall-dock and it instantly fires up your system, sets proper volume, and broadcasts a pre-determined playlist throughout the house.

Bitchin'. No other word but bitchin'.

Oh, finally, on a more unique note, I downloaded (what I thought was) Led Zeppelin's performance at Atlantic Records' 40th Anniversary Celebration ('twas in April about six or seven years ago) from a file-sharing network. So I was all excited to see, upon my return home last night, that the download had completed. Unfortunately, I was less-than-thrilled to discover that instead of Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham, what actually came through was some kind of porno, except it was completely backward. Not sure how or why someone went to the trouble of reversing it, but it was very short so by the time I realized it wasn't a five-tune Zeppelin reunion, it was over. And I must admit, it was kinda neat.

Boogie's 30-Second Review:
It's a guy and a girl...she looks really, really happy, he looks constipated, then she spits some stuff at him, it hits him in his weenie, he gets dressed, and treats her really nicely. And then the credits roll.

Art imitating life? Or the other way around?

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