Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

On This Day: Feb 5

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 24 posts previously published on February 5th

  • 2024
  • 2023
    • 📚 January Fifteenth by Rachel Swirsky No review, as this book is a Philip K. Dick Award nominee, and I am the coordinator for the award ceremony at Norwescon. While I have no input into the selection of nominees or judging, I want to be sure to avoid any appearance of influence. ➡
  • 2020
    • Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open: “I don’t care whether anything materially bad will or won’t happen as a consequence of Wacom taking this data from me. I simply resent the fact that they’re doing it.” ➡
    • Why You May Never Learn the Truth About ICE: “The National Archives is letting millions of documents, including many related to immigrants’ rights, be destroyed or deleted.” This is horrifying and infuriating. ➡
    • On This Day: Feb 5 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from February 5 ➡
  • 2019
    • I’m as much of a fan of Rent as any other average theatre nerd, but I swear I’ve had that damn earworm stuck in my head for at least 525,600 minutes by now, and I really need all of you to stop making references to it, okay? 🎵 ➡
  • 2016
    • Now this is a good way to wrap up a long week. (36/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • A hat and two hoods (hoodie and jacket) makes for good insulation, but also rids me of any peripheral vision. Prairie kept giggling and poking me in the noggin. ➡
    • Huh. Well, would’ja look at that. Somebody snuck a bootleg @norwescon poster in here. How’d that happen? ➡
  • 2007
    • Initiative 957 If passed by Washington voters, the Defense of Marriage Initiative would require heterosexual couples to have kids within three years or else have their marriages annulled. ➡
  • 2006
    • Steelers take the Superbowl Neither Prairie nor I really know much about football, and we don't really _care_ to know much. However, that didn't stop us from kicking back and having a fun time watching the game and doing our own form of silly armchair quarterbacking. ➡
  • 2005
    • Pigface, Sheep on Drugs, and MY BIRTHDAY The Pigface Free For All Tour is going to be coming through Seattle. Pigface and Sheep on Drugs (and Nocturne, and possibly The Damage Manual and The Countdown) in concert -- and they're performing at the Fenix Underground on Tuesday, May 3rd. ➡
    • Emerald City ComiCon 'I'm not funny — I'm freakishly obsessed!' I burst out laughing when I heard this (thoroughly embarrassing the girl who'd said it, I think), but it seemed as oddly appropriate as it was amusing while I wandered around the Emerald City ComiCon this morning. ➡
    • Naked robbery warning! WARNING: A scam is being pulled, mainly on older men. What happens is that when you stop for a red light, a young nude woman comes up and pretends to be washing your windshield. While she is doing this, another person opens your back door and steals anything in the car. ➡
    • Are we about to be without a Governor? This mess just keeps getting worse and worse. A local judge declared yesterday that the Republican suit to overturn the election will proceed, and might end up voiding the election — but he wouldn't order a new election. Would that leave Washington without a Governor? ➡
  • 2003
    • What Al said, in tiny bits. I've seen this all over the 'net, but had yet to make a link to it. As it's far past time I did so, here it is: Why Al says that 'E' is the same as 'MC2', as told so that each word has four jots or less. ➡
    • Networking sex he average amount of information per ejaculation is 1.560*109 * 2 bits * 2.00*108, which comes out to be 6.24*1017 bits. That's about 78,000 terabytes of data! As a basis of comparison, were the entire text content of the Library of Congress to be scanned and stored, it would only take up about 20 terabytes. If you figure that a male orgasm lasts five seconds, you get a transmission rate of 15,600 tb/s. In comparison, an OC-96 line (like the ones that make up much of the backbone of the internet) can move .005 tb/s. Cable modems generally transmit somewhere around 1/5000th of that. ➡
    • Work, work, work I finally got a chance to talk with my boss about my possible future with Xerox, a conversation that I'd been itching for for a while now. When working for Xerox, a temp such as myself can be used for a maximum of 18 months before the situation needs to be re-evaluated. I've known that the tail end of my 18 months was coming up fairly quickly, but wasn't at all sure about what I'd be looking at when it it. Some of my questions finally got answered today. ➡
    • The case for war Gen. Powell made his presentation to the UN today, giving America's (ahem…Bush's…) case for going to war with Iraq. I haven't had time to look over the full thing yet, but the US Department of State has the entire presentation available on the web. ➡
    • Bush sets new record Well, Bush has gone and set a new record by plunging the U.S. into a $304,000,000,000 deficit, which is only likely to get worse and worse (I've seen some estimates eventually putting us at the trillion level) should we start turning Iraq into a molten slagheap. Can we just get to the next round of elections please? My single vote might not be enough to get Bush out of office on its own, but I'm sure itching to do my part to try. ➡
    • More on Animatrix Back in October, I mentioned an upcoming DVD release called 'Animatrix' — a series of short animated films set in the universe of The Matrix. It turns out that of the nine shorts that will be on the disc, four are going to be released to the web, and the first has just been posted. ➡
  • 2001
    • 1941 toepick cannibal line Now -- the newest additions to my movie library. Big surprise, huh? ➡
    • Occasional downtime I'm working on my CD collection again, which often necessitates switching my 'puter over to Mac OS 9. As my webserver only operates when I'm running Mac OS X...well, no webserver when I'm working. ➡

On This Day: Feb 4

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 22 posts previously published on February 4th

  • 2025
  • 2024
  • 2023
    • 📚 Arboreality by Rebecca Campbell No review, as this book is a Philip K. Dick Award nominee, and I am the coordinator for the award ceremony at Norwescon. While I have no input into the selection of nominees or judging, I want to be sure to avoid any appearance of influence. ➡
  • 2020
    • What is a Blade Runner? How Ridley Scott’s Movie Has Origins in William S. Burroughs’ Novella, Blade Runner: A Movie: This is fascinating; I had no idea. And now I want to see if I can track down copies of both Nourse’s and Burroughs’ books. ➡
    • Twitter Helps Spread Disinformation During Iowa Caucuses: “A Twitter spokesperson told Gizmodo that the company does not believe viral tweets falsely claiming people’s votes are worthless in the hours preceding an election will discourage them from voting.” ➡
    • On This Day: Feb 4 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from February 4 ➡
  • 2019
    • The Seattle area got a good dump of snow last night! Here’s what we woke up to in Renton. Of course, I work from home, so no snow day for me…. ➡
  • 2017
    • Book twelve (and second #PKDickAward nominee) of 2017: Graft, by Matt Hill. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
  • 2016
    • Will you get ALL THE RIBBONS! at #nwc39? (35/366) ➡
    • Today’s office view. Mostly just testing posting to Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook natively rather than piping through IFTTT. ➡
  • 2014
    • It’s cold out here, and the next few days are just going to get colder. Brrrrr! ➡
  • 2009
    • Links for February 4th from 14:21 to 18:52 Sometime between 14:21 and 18:52, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • Why Your Avatar Matters • The 20 Worst Foods in America of 2009 • Exclusive: Stephen King on J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer • Ancient Fossil Find: This Snake Could Eat a Cow! • Masked Man Robs Stores With Klingon Sword ➡
    • Links for February 2nd through February 4th Sometime between February 2nd and February 4th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • Cash 4 Gold Would Like to Melt Down and Recast Their Reputation • Princesses Preen in a Pauper Economy • Passport RFIDs Cloned Wholesale by $250 eBay Auction Spree • How Twitter Was Born • Untouched East Germany Flat Found ➡
  • 2006
  • 2004
    • Suit measurements? Anyone in Seattle know of a place in the downtown/First Hill/Capitol Hill area that I could go get measured for a suit without having to buy one? Or, failing that, what measurements are generally needed so I could do it myself? I'm quite clueless in these matters. ➡
  • 2003
    • WTC finalists chosen The two finalists for the project to rebuild on the site of the World Trade Center have been announced. Which do you prefer? ➡
    • The speed of what? A CNN caption that really needed some editing before going live. ➡
    • The pervert motto That's like the pervert motto…they make you put your right hand in the air, your left hand down your pants, and recite that. ➡
    • Nothing to see here. Really. Pablo Picasso's anti-war painting 'Guernica' has hung in the lobby of the U.N. since 1985. It serves as a sobering reminder of the horrors of war to those in the U.N. who may be faced with making decisions as to whether or not to sanction attacks against one country or another. Unless, of course, it's politically expedient not to remind them what war can do, in which case we'll just cover it up. ➡
    • Photographic glitches? Lightning? Alien death rays? I think the thing that bugs me the most about this is that even though NASA has set up a page for people to upload images and video that they may have taken during the shuttle disaster, rather than do that (or, to give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe in addition to that), this guy decided to run to the media and stir up a little controversy. ➡
    • MT: SimpleComments Thanks to a clever little hack by Adam Kalsey, all comments and TrackBack pings that I receive are displayed as a single list on each entry's page, sorted by the time they were received. Much nicer visually than having two seperate listings of responses to one of my posts. ➡
  • 2002

On This Day: Feb 3

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 27 posts previously published on February 3rd

  • 2025
  • 2024
  • 2021
  • 2020
    • Old CSS, new CSS: “I’m here to tell all of you to get off my lawn. Here’s a history of CSS and web design, as I remember it.” This is a wonderful rundown of how HTML and CSS web design has changed over the years. I still have a few mid-’90s pages on my site ... Read more ➡
    • NSW and Victoria just jumped 1.8 metres north: Added to the list of “things I didn’t know about Australia”: It sits on a particularly fast-moving (~7cm/yr) tectonic plate, and due to a lack of updates since 1994, the GPS system is currently off by about six feet (but is soon to be fixed). ➡
    • Story Time From Space: Astronauts reading STEM-focused children’s books from the International Space Station to kids on earth! ➡
    • On This Day: Feb 3 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from February 3 ➡
  • 2019
    • As seen on Capitol Hill in Seattle on Friday Night, not far from the Mercury: the world gets hard to live in with an open spirit. But risk is the spice of life. Be legendary. ➡
    • Book twelve of 2019: Theory of Bastards, by Audrey Schulman. #PKDickAward nominee. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 📚 Neat near-future exploration of interpersonal connections and intimacy, through the lens of research into the sexual habits of bonobo apes. ➡
  • 2016
    • Had a “all these photos look doofy” evening. This is as good as it gets today. (34/366) ➡
    • Got a nice handwritten thank-you note from a prospective LAJ student that I chatted with. #CWUpride :) ➡
  • 2014
    • Survived another Monday! Time to get Prairie and head home. ➡
  • 2013
    • Difficult Listening Hour 06 (110BPM) After taking last weekend off (but hey, I gave you almost four hours in two mixes last time I updated), here's another new practice mix. Every song in this mix is somewhere between 105 and 115 BPM. ➡
  • 2010
    • Comparisons Countries that forbid gays in their military: Cuba, China, Egypt, Greece, Iran, Jamaica, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, South Korea, Syria, Turkey, Venezuela, Yemen, the USA. ➡
  • 2009
  • 2006
    • The 24.6 Second College Degree Every day, we're spending enough money in Iraq and Afghanistan to pay for _3,503_ four-year public school college degrees. ➡
    • Trademark this, Aggies! Someone needs to make t-shirts with the following: √144th Man ➡
    • Gored for Women! Another example of organizations that should check their web site addresses a little more carefully. Today's case in point: The American Heart Association's Go Red for Women site, promoting heart disease awareness. ➡
  • 2005
    • Me and a Gun and a Man on my Back This is without a doubt one of the most powerful things I've come across lately — an eight-shot series of photographs and poems by selkie decrying abuse. ➡
    • Three hours on one post I just spent three hours on a single post -- and I wasn't even writing a new post, but just reading and responding to comments prompted by my rambling grumbles about the State of the Union. I'm going to be so behind in NetNewsWire tomorrow… ➡
    • Dan Rather’s replacement Every so often over the past day or so, I've seen headlines like this 'Schieffer is interim replacement for Rather', only my brain would conveniently drop the 'e', turning the name into 'Schiffer'. So for the past day, I've had the vague notion that Dan Rather's replacement would be Claudia Schiffer. ➡
  • 2004
    • Bush’s Budget The president's budget reveals his priorities, what he truly cares about. It is not a reassuring picture. ➡
    • The MS Mac BU Last Friday, the Seattle P-I ran a nice story on the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft, which included a photo of some of the Mac BU staffers seated in front of racks of Mac computers. ➡
  • 2003
    • geek*muffin Ladies and gentlemen — please stop by and welcome my good friend Kirsten to the weblogging world. ➡
    • Desktop images from Columbia There are some gorgeous images taken by the crew of the Columbia before it broke up on reentry, courtesy of NASA. I've taken two of my favorites and turned them into 1024x768 desktop images, which you can grab here if you like. ➡
    • Creative Commons I took a look at the Creative Commons licences when they first appeared, and considered adopting one of them for my weblog, but in the end, also decided not to. At the bottom of every page on this site, you'll see the standard copyright line, and that's how I intend to keep it. ➡
    • Tired of the 'renovations' Grrrrrr.... I woke up this morning to find a note slipped under my door telling me that the power to the building was going to be cut off again today, due to the construction/renovation work currently going on. Fat lot of good that note did me, though, considering the power was already off when I woke up. ➡

On This Day: Feb 2

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 27 posts previously published on February 2nd

  • 2025
    • Groundhog Day 🎥: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Always good, every time. ➡
    • Back in Action 🎥: ⭐️⭐️⭐️: Nothing groundbreaking, but makes for a fine bit of afternoon entertainment. ➡
  • 2024
  • 2023
    • 📚 The Legacy of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson No review, as this book is a Philip K. Dick Award nominee, and I am the coordinator for the award ceremony at Norwescon. While I have no input into the selection of nominees or judging, I want to be sure to avoid any appearance of influence. ➡
  • 2021
    • All of this year’s Philip K. Dick Award nominees have arrived! Two months to get through them all (plus two more that are predecessors of books in this stack). Will I make it? 📚 ➡
  • 2020
  • 2018
    • Well, what else would we be watching tonight? ➡
  • 2017
    • Saw this while walking on the Ganges. Either this bridge (which carries one of the campus steam heating pipes) has a pretty severe leak, or the winter river gods were very happy to see me! 😉😂 ➡
    • Last week I got brave/foolish enough to climb down to walk along the frozen Ganges (the irrigation canal that runs through campus). Figured I might as well do it once while I could! ➡
  • 2016
    • Some nights you just need to build a cute little #Lego #mixels guy. (33/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Did a photo a day all January, then missed yesterday. Meh. Ah well, there were some days I did more than one, so my average will still be on point. Meanwhile, this is what happens when I get lazy about shaving for a week. Scruffy! Time to take care of that. ➡
  • 2009
  • 2007
    • Throwing down the gauntlet… Bill Gates: Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine. ➡
  • 2006
  • 2005
    • Amazon Prime I am very excited to announce Amazon Prime, our first ever membership program, which provides 'all-you-can-eat' express shipping. It's simple: for a flat annual membership fee, you get unlimited two-day shipping for free on over a million in-stock items. Members also get overnight shipping for only $3.99 per item -- order as late as 6:30PM ET. ➡
    • No more combined feeds While I'd been considering this for a little while, Dave's 'Information Aversion' post prompted me to un-splice my Flickr photos from my RSS feeds. Having done that, I've updated my feeds page to list my current available syndication feeds, all broken out to allow readers to subscribe to as much or as little of my drivel as they please. ➡
    • State of the Union 2005 'Liveblogging' (though I won't actually post this until afterwards) the State of the Union. I'm not sure why, all it's going to do is annoy me. But still... [Speakeasy had sudden network issues midway through the SotU, so I didn't get to see all of it. Lots of grumbles about what I did see, though.] ➡
    • Jumping the gun? All this, and it's just barely into February. That just doesn't seem right. Okay, so I'm not in Alaska anymore, where February tends to be the coldest and most bitter weeks of winter, but isn't it just a bit early for weather like this, even here in Seattle? ➡
  • 2004
    • Happy Blogaversary! Congrats to Kirsten on her one-year 'blogaversary', complete with spiffy new site design! ➡
    • Teaching? Technical writing? Every so often, a topic pops up in the TypePad User Group forums that I feel I can add my own particular little brand of insight into, and I'll spend some time doing my best to explain (often in excruciating detail) what's going on. I recently got a very nice comment from Doc in response to one such post. ➡
    • Only Just Beginning There once was a boy who remembered that his heart did not ever really belong to him. So he tried to give it back to the sky. ➡
    • RSS feeds updated I've updated, rearranged, and cleaned up the RSS feeds for Eclecticism. Hopefully I haven't just screwed things up too horribly for those of you who subscribe to one feed or another. ➡
    • New category, design tweaks Following up on my thought process, I've added a 15Minutes archive category that collects all posts related to my experiences with blogging my way out of a job. I've also made some other slight design tweaks. ➡
    • One more mention I need to set up a 'fifteen minutes' category… ➡
    • That’s no pastie! Ah, well -- my views aren't about to change anyone's mind. Still, I'm constantly frustrated by a culture that glorifies violence and vilifies sexuality (unless it's being used to sell something). Seems pretty backwards. But that's just me. ➡
    • Welcome, Katya! Many congratulations to Casey and Jennifer, who became the proud parents of Katarina Anne Scott on the 19th! ➡
  • 2001
    • Balls and beats I also may have an opportunity to start spinning again...albeit in sort of a cheezy fashion. The bowling alley in Muldoon is one of the ones in town that does Neon Bowling on weekend nights, and they're looking for a DJ for their Saturday nights. ➡

Difficult Listening Hour 2020.01.30

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Week two of my unplanned, unrehearsed, seat-of-the-pants goofing around. As a way of getting back into practice and doing something regularly, I’ve started doing regular Twitch broadcasts on Thursday nights. These are the results. Anything goes.

Read more

On This Day: Feb 1

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 16 posts previously published on February 1st

  • 2024
  • 2022
  • 2020
  • 2019
    • Book eleven of 2019: Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories, by Vandana Singh. #PKDickAward nominee. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 📚 One of the best collections I’ve read in a long time. Fascinating, sometimes haunting stories, not a dud in the bunch, and a definite pleasure throughout. ➡
  • 2016
    • I know exercise has benefits. It’s just hard to remember that some evenings. (32/366) ➡
  • 2015
    • Always a little amused at how much difference a few minutes trimming and shaving can make. ➡
    • This bin at Fred Meyer was like some kind of plush horror film. As Teddy sunk ever deeper into the writhing mass of giant pink caterpillars, he cursed the cruel gods that had fixed a permanent grin on his horrified, screaming face. ➡
  • 2010
  • 2007
    • Nobody Likes a Quitter As we enter this first day of February, I've now officially been one month entirely without cigarettes. ➡
    • Harry Potter, Year Seven: The Deathly Hallows The publication date for the next -- er, that is, _last_ -- Harry Potter book has been announced. Don't expect Prairie or I to answer calls or be available in _any_ way this July 21st. Our day is planned. ➡
  • 2005
    • Stating the obvious I brought up the Flickr page for photos tagged with 'alaska' tonight to show it to Prairie — lots of gorgeous shots of my home state — and had to laugh at the “related” tags that Flickr automatically generates. ➡
  • 2004
  • 2003
    • Space Shuttle Colombia lost My heartfelt condlences to the families of the seven astronauts of the Space Shuttle Columbia, which was lost today during reentry. ➡
  • 2001
    • DJ Wudi strikes again! For the third year in a row, I'll be DJ'ing at UAA's Dance Marathon benefit fundraiser for the Providence Children's ICU. ➡
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📚 eight of 2020: The Rosewater Redemption by Tade Thompson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #PKDickAward nominee

An excellent conclusion to a fascinating trilogy. Wrapped everything up nicely, satisfactory ends for all the characters, and a very interesting take on alien invasion.

On This Day: Jan 31

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past. Here are my past posts for January 31…

There are 18 posts previously published on January 31st

  • 2025
    • iPhone security: Hard locking and lockdown mode IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE PROTESTING or in any sort of situation where there's a higher-than-average chance of having potentially adversarial encounters with the police, and if you have an iPhone, PLEASE remember these two tips. ➡
  • 2024
    • Year 50 Day 274 A pseudo-sequel to last week’s shot from the optometrist’s office, I guess? ➡
  • 2021
  • 2020
    • 📚 eight of 2020: The Rosewater Redemption by Tade Thompson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #PKDickAward nominee An excellent conclusion to a fascinating trilogy. Wrapped everything up nicely, satisfactory ends for all the characters, and a very interesting take on alien invasion. ➡
    • On This Day: Jan 31 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from January 31 ➡
  • 2019
    • 🖖 #StarTrekDiscovery S02E03: Meh. I’m all good with Tilly’s snarky space fungus, but all the Klingon stuff dragged. It was like this episode was half season two, half season one, and that wasn’t a good thing. My least favorite S2 episode so far. Fingers crossed for next week. ➡
  • 2016
    • Book six of 2016: Crux, by Ramez Naam. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #PKDickAward pre-nominee. #rameznaam (31/366) ➡
    • Four new #Lego figures today, including #leftshark! ➡
  • 2014
    • Almost forgot to do a picture today. So you get a creepy eyeball shot because I’m tired and lack creativity. ➡
  • 2008
  • 2005
    • Toy Story 3 having problems o one wants to direct 'Toy Story 3.' That's the word in Hollywood's animation world, where the third installment of the incredibly successful Pixar series has no director, writer or, possibly, stars. My sources in the animation biz tell me that Disney, which will make 'Toy Story 3' without Pixar, cannot find a director to guide the project. ➡
  • 2004
    • CBS needs to work on their definition of ‘issue’ ads CBS can't decide whether they'll run controversial advertising or not. ➡
    • Go Judy! An absolutely beautiful article at The Nation looking at the media's inability to cope with the fact that Judy Dean is exactly what she appears to be — a normal, well-adjusted independent woman in a healthy, loving relationship with her husband who doesn't want to abandon her medical practice to be trotted out at every political opportunity during the campaign season. ➡
    • 411 Length Required Recently, ThinkGeek started selling HTTPanties — a set of panties with either '200 OK' or '403 Forbidden' emblazoned across the front. Cute idea. ➡
    • The Howard Dean Aerobics Program Need some exercise? Just go to a Howard Dean appearance should he come through your town. I swear, with the number of standing ovations after every major point Dean makes, his supporters are up and down more often than your average Episcopal congregation! ➡
    • Miracles never cease As it turns out, last week our building was apparently purchased by a new leasing agency, so we weren't sure what sort of deals or possibilities might exist with the new management. We finally got confirmation on the new setup, and I'm not going to be able to get a free months rent for renewing my lease. ➡
  • 2002
    • Concrete Blonde review posted I just got e-mail from Dean, the webmaster of a Concrete Blonde fansite. Earlier this morning I'd e-mailed him about my little writeup of last night's show, and he went ahead and posted it on his site! ➡
    • Still in Hollywood I've been to shows where the band is too busy performing to really make a connection with the audience. Johnette is anything but that -- the kind of artist that you can, and do, actually believe when they talk about how much they're enjoying being there, how much fun they're having performing, and how much they love the audience that night. ➡