Well, now’s as good a time as any to play a little catch up after the past two weeks or so of the server being down.
As far as that goes, it shouldn’t be happening again any time soon. Casey has been letting me host my webserver on his DSL line ever since I got down to Seattle, and all that happened was that he got a bit behind in his bills and had his electricity cut off for a few days. No electricity, though, means no computer — and hence, no webpage. Then once the power came back on, my machine apparently freaked out a bit after the improper shutdown, and had another couple days of not responding. By that point, it was about time for my DSL line to come online, so I went ahead and brought the iMac over to my apartment and spent a couple days getting it hooked in to my network, reconfigured, and ready to go. Now that I’m up and online with my DSL connection, everything should be good to go.
I’ve posted a note about this that’s been sitting at the top of my page since I got back online — I’m hoping to be able to move my site to a more easily remembered address in the near future. I’ve paid for www.djwudi.com and am in the process of trying to get everything on my end configured so that I can switch over — but, as it’s a project I’ve never tried before, I’m pretty clueless so far. My best-possible-world target date for the switch is January 1st, but I have no real clue if I’m going to be able to do that or not. I’ll be sure to alert people when it happens, however.
The past few weeks have been a lot of fun, however. Things with Candice and I are going extremely well, which is wonderful, and there’s been a bunch of interesting stuff going on. Let’s see how much I can remember off the top of my head….
This last Monday we went to the Pigface show — that was incredible! Rick and Candice came over after I got home from work, and we drove down to find a decent parking spot close to the EMP. We found a good one, just about two blocks away — at least, if you don’t pay attention to the 8 blocks we had to walk around the freeway to get there. No biggie, though. Once there, we met up with Kim, Kayo, Chad, and Don outside the EMP and headed in. For as bizarre of a building as the EMP is (my personal opinion is that it looks like someone spent a very long evening drinking too many different colors of alcohol and eating marshmallows, then threw up on the pavement), it actually worked really well for a concert space. Their stage area has surprisingly good sound, they’re able to set aside a beer garden so that the main floor can be all-ages, and while it’s not a huge space, that makes it really easy to actually see the performers.
While we were standing around waiting for things to get started, we ran into James Harris, a friend of Ricks that also used to work at TimeFrame. He told us that our friend Jimmy was out in the crowd somewhere, so Rick and Candice and I wandered off to try and find him. When we did, not only did we find him, but we also found out that he was there with Jon Hannah and Ron, my ex-roommate! It was pretty cool to run into this big crowd of Anchorage people. It did get a little frightening when I looked at the eight of us standing there — myself, Rick, Jimmy, James, Ron, Jon, Chad, and Candice — and realized that all of those eight people that I was standing with at a concert in Seattle had been to The Pit at one point or another, and seven of them (all but Candice) had actually lived there at some point (some officially and some couch surfing)! Wierd.
The only really bad thing about running into Ron is that it ended up blowing a prank that Candice and I were going to play on her friend Christy. Since Christy was dating Ron during some of the time he was living at The Pit, she’d met me as Woody. Well, Candice has been telling her all about this great guy she’s dating down here…named Michael. Our plan was to have Candice meet Christy and her boyfriend at ‘Koots this Saturday night. A little after they were there, I’d wander in and recognize Christy, and wander over and say hi since I hadn’t seen her in a while. During the conversation I’d get ‘introduced’ to her friend Candice..and suddenly, Candice and I would just start madly making out, completely out of nowhere, just to see the reaction on Christy’s face. Unfortunately, since Ron saw Candice and I together at the Pigface show he’s been trying to get ahold of Christy, and since we figured he’d tell her that we were together, Candice went ahead and filled her in. Ah, well…it was still a good idea.
Anyway, the show. When we walked in, there was some local band playing. I’ve got no clue who they were, but they didn’t make that great of an impression. Next up was Godhead — I’m never going to buy any of their music, but they were certainly good for entertainment value! They seemed to specialize in bad makeup, scowls, and making “I’m so goth” poses. All I really wanted to do the entire set was hand each of them Gother Than Thou t-shirts.
The second band was Gravity Kills, who did about what I expected from what I remembered of their album. Fairly unoriginal but solid ‘cyberdustrial’ (or whatever you want to call it), and a fairly entertaining stage presence. I’m not any bigger of a fan than I was before the show, but it certainly wasn’t bad.
Last — but definitely not least — was Pigface. Very, very cool. They opened with one of the members doing a song with just him on acoustic guitar and singing in front of screens across the stage, while the rest of the band played with flashlights on the screens. The screens came down afterwards revealing all eight current primary members on stage, and they proceeded to rip their way through an absolutely incredible set. Meg Lee Chin really surprised me when she showed up on stage. I’d been hearing this great powerful voice on Pigface albums for years, and out hops this tiny little asian woman! She’s just as good onstage as she is on the albums, though. Eventually by the end of the show they’d gone through a fair chunk of songs, had to ask the crowd to give their singer back after his crowd surfing just wouldn’t stop, and generally put on a very kick-ass show. My ears were ringing for the next four days — and it was worth every minute of it (though, I do think I’ll be taking earplugs to my next concert).
Speaking of next concerts — this rocks! Chad stopped by the Shoebox the other day, and let me know two very cool things. Firstly, the $20 I’d borrowed from his boyfriend Don at the Pigface show for a t-shirt doesn’t need to get paid back — it’s a Christmas present. Secondly, they’d picked up four tickets to an upcoming Concrete Blonde show! One each for myself, Candice, Rick, and whoever Rick wants to invite — I hit the ceiling when he pulled those out. Very, very cool. So, January 30th, we’ll all be out at the Showbox watching Concrete Blonde…I can’t wait.
Let’s see…what else? Miranda was here Wednesday and Thursday night, which was fun. She’d had her car shipped from Alaska to here and had to come through town to pick it up, so she and Lorelei took a couple days to visit with me and some other friend of hers that are in the area. Was great to see her again — and little miss Lorelei is getting incredibly big! It’s amazing what six months can do when a kiddo is that young…she’s going to turn all of one year old this December 24th. I took a couple pictures while they were here, I’ll try to get them posted soon — I’d do it now, but my Mac is busy converting more of my mixes to .mp3‘s for the site.
I think those are the major events. Candice flew up to Anchorage last night, so I’ve got the next week to spend catching up on my X-Files (I recently picked up the Season 4 box) and puttering around with my ‘puters. This Friday I’ll be leaving straight from work to the airport, and from there to Alaska for four days for Christmas. Should be a blast — I’m just not looking to the temperatures up there right now! Ah, well, I’m sure I’ll survive.
Until later, then….