Horses are terrible people

&Ok, so like Rockstar: INXS, Michelle and I were glued to Rockstar: Supernova.  When it came down to the final four I was excited.  I would have instantly went out and bought the new album if they picked any of the final 4 but one.  The one they picked.  I'm so disappointed.  The music is good, I like the attitude of Jason and Gilby, but I can't listen to Lucas.  His voice just grates on me.  He doesn't sing well and he wears too much makeup.;nbsp; Here's a band of stripped down, cool rockers with a lead singer who is personally trying to make up for the lack up makeup in hard rock during the 90's.  Give me a break.  Oh well, at least the Panic Channel is decent.  I could go into detail about how each of the other 3 would have been better for the band and their sound and a bit about their shortcomings but what's the point?

Boy am I behind the times.  Not only is Coverflow not a new application, Apple released iTunes 7 today with Coverflow integrated.  The author of Coverflow has said on IRC that he can't say more and the Coverflow site is down.  I imagine he must have gotten a pretty sweet deal from Apple for it to be integrated.  My complaint about the iTunes integration?  It doesn't have the letter based slider that Coverflow originally had.

Tonight I stumbled upon what has to be one of the cooler useless apps for OS X, Coverflow.  Coverflow provides you an album cover view of your iTunes library and lets you select what you're listening to right from the UI.  Find an album you like and double click on it and it starts on iTunes.  While the UI is a bit large for everyday use, I am enjoying "thumbing" through the albums and playing with it.

Last night I had the pleasure of going to the Tool concert at Staples Center here in Los Angeles.  The show was amazing and the sound was much better than I expected.  They started off with Lost Keys and Rosetta Stoned. I was impressed and happy that they didn't try and play a recording of the talking track from Lost Keys.  I think it would have distracted and been too obvious as a recording.  

As expected a majority of the set list was comprised of songs off of 10,000 Days which was fine by me.  Other songs on the set included Stinkfist, Fourty-Six & 2, AEnima, Schism, and they closed with Lateralus.  While I was hoping for a track off of Opiate or Undertow, it wasn't to be.  The highlight of the show for me was AEnima which was incredible live.  

The way they handled the lights and visuals was great; they slowly progressed with visual complexity through out the set, starting with none and ending with everything going full bore.  The all white stage and low backing (6, 7 feet tops?) progressed from light show to video display and at one point the display that runs around the entire staples center was flashing the Tool logo.

Maynard was humorous with his referring to the VIP's in Los Angeles repeatedly.  After they finished Rosetta Stoned he said something along the lines of "Oh good the VIP's are here now, we can start the show" and when they took a five to ten minute break before going into the last quarter of the show he explained that they had to stop because the VIP's had to go out and buy more beer.

Overall I don't know how to place the concert against David Gilmour earlier this year, but I have to say it was one of the best concerts I've been to.

I've just launched a little mini project which might be useful for someone.  I have been looking for a good paste site that didn't have an index so that the things I've pasted could be kept private.  I've wanted this because sometimes I want to share logs with other GameSurge staff but due to the sensitive nature of what they contain, I don't want to paste them on a paste site which has an index of things people posted.  Thus I created PrivatePaste.com which covers all of the functionality i need without listing peoples posts.  If find it useful or have a feature request, please let me know.

This part of Jame's letter to the 12 tribes of Israel speaks so much to me with regard to my personal trials I felt compelled to share it:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. ⁴Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. ⁵If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. ⁶But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; ⁸he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.

I suffer from the age old problem of not enough time in the day.  Not enough time to divide among family and work, personal time and entertainment.  I've been stuck in neutral for the past few days because every time I think of something I need or want to do, a project or new idea, I think of 5 others I should work on as well.

I recently took over running Support on GameSurge and that's been a big task.  I've begun the process of restructuring the way we staff support volunteers and am trying to make the structure easier to not be lost in it.  Previously the structure of responsibility was largely top heavy.  I've tried to restructure it in a more corporate management style where there are managers all the way up the chain.  As with most things, it's an experiment in process and we'll see how it goes.

I have a "top secret" project idea for Apple iTunes and if I can take it upon myself to lean objective C and XCode, I might get to that.  One can't forget my eMuse project, now 3 years in the planning, Framewerk which has yet to make it to a publicly releasable state, or my involvement in various PostgreSQL communities.  I've been wanting to make a Framewerk based intermediary pathetic.org while I'm working on eMuse, so we'll see if I make time for that.  I've been wanting to do a monthly podcast for pathetic.org members and then I have net|accountable which has a prototype and is underway.

Work is good, though like my pet project list, I have many balls up in the air.  I've been working on changing out our telecommunications infrastructure and we're about to bite the bullet and go full VOIP.  Right now we're VOIP to our Asterisk box which has a T1 card in it.  Instead I'm bringing in bonded 4/2 lines from Time Warner and buying little boxes that will bond them across the internet as a VPN.  Should be an interesting project to finish up and see the results of.

Still dealing with the court stuff with my boys' mom.  Hopefully God will answer our prayers and it will all end with a situation that is both fair and that closes out this situation so we're not struggling with the stress and anxiety of court's, child support services, and multiple-state interpretations of court orders.  Michelle has been amazing in helping keep all this on the right track, though it's been a big drain on her.  I'm sure her patience and hard work will be rewarded.

Things are going well at Church.  This Saturday I'm installing a new server and running some CAT-5 for the office.  We've been growing so much that the office needs to be built out a little more infrastructure wise.  I've also been working on a new website design and updating the engine for the church website.  

None of this seems to happen when or how I want it to, and projects seem to go on a long time, but at least God has given me the gifts to be able to complete my various projects and is teaching me patience in getting them done.

Oh and if you're following the weight loss progress, as of today I've lost 28 pounds!