Office Depot bootlegs

I stopped by the downtown Seattle Office Depot on lunch to do some coveting, and had to wonder how customers were expected to compare the quality of the various LCD displays when they were all playing a highly-compressed (crappy) video — possibly a VCD — of music videos taken from CMT‘s broadcast stream (complete with a “Ripped by…” banner that popped up every few videos).

I halfway considered saying something to the one employee on duty, but as he could barely manage to grunt a greeting at me as I walked by since he was so engrossed in watching a (highly-illegal) bad quality (overcompressed and the wrong aspect ratio) bootleg of Star Wars Episode III — yeah, the one still in theaters — I didn’t think that it would be worth it.

iTunesFour Sticks” by Rollins Band from the album Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin (1995, 3:31).

Podcast 03: Difficult Listening Hour 04

Number three of my old collection of mix sessions that I’m putting up for download and podcast. The keen-eyed might notice that we’ve jumped straight from DLH02 to DLH04. There is a DLH03, but I’ve decided to hold off on posting that one just yet as, quite honestly, the mixing in the current version of DLH03…well, it sucks. Very train wreck-y.

I was hoping to be able to re-mix DHL03 last night so that I could continue posting these in order, but I’m still figuring out the mixing software I have and, well, apparently I didn’t do something quite right.

In the meantime, though, this one’s in good shape. It’s also the longest of the mixes I’ve put up so far, very nearly a full hour and a quarter.

Standard disclaimer: All the mixes I’m posting were mixed ‘live’ — running a Pioneer dual CD mixer directly into my computer and recording straight to .mp3 — and have had no post-mix editing done in the computer. As such, they’re not flawless, but they’re not bad, either, if I do say so myself.

Here’s the link: Difficult Listening Hour 04 (1h 14m 27s, 85.39Mb). Tracks included are:

  1. God Within ‘Raincry (Submerged)’
  2. Jaydee ‘Plastic Dreams’
  3. Snitzer & McCoy vs. Humate ‘Oh My Darling I Love You (Heavy)’
  4. Basco ‘The Beat Goes On’
  5. Lo Fidelity All Stars ‘Lazer Dip Sheep Funk’
  6. Freestylers ‘Drop the Boom’
  7. Freestylers ‘Don’t Stop’
  8. Len ‘Man of the Year’
  9. Toxic Twins feat. The Dust Brothers ‘I’ll House You (Toxik Acid Vybe and Phunky Bass)’
  10. Cirrus ‘Back on a Mission (DJ Dan)’
  11. DJ Supreme ‘The Wildstyle (Klubbheads)’
  12. Kornholio ‘Friction (Hot Tracks)’

Just a coincidence

I’ve updated my original post to reflect this, but just to be perfectly clear, it does appear that North Shore’s “I’m just here to get laid…” shirt is nothing more than a coincidence, as I knew was possible.

From what I can tell from a couple quick Google searches, my I’m Too Sexy… shirts (“I’m too sexy for my blog” and “I’m too sexy for your blog“) are still one-of-a-kind, available only from my site and (sigh) CafePress.

Wo0t!

iTunesChickasuarus” by Pigface from the album Preaching to the Perverted (2001, 5:04).

OpinionOutpost comment spam

Note: On 10/27/2005, I received an apology e-mail from the person who left the comment that originally prompted this post. I’ve accepted his apology, and have removed his name and contact information from this post. Mistakes happen, but Opinion Outpost does appear to be on the level.


[redacted] —

Today I received the following comment on my weblog. The comment was posted to an old entry (a technique often used to “hide” information, as it is less likely to be noticed by site owners), had nothing to do with the subject of the entry, and was nothing more than an unsolicited advertisement — in short, it was spam.

Read more

Shiny!

Just a quick note of thanks to Bryan, Dori, Shelley, Tvindy, Jacqueline, Johan, and probably others that I’ve forgotten. All of you have, at one point or another, either personally or through your weblogs, recommended Firefly. I just finished watching the last episode tonight…

…and damn if I’m not as excited about Serenity as the rest of you are.

Two quick questions (spoiler-free answers, please):

  1. I couldn’t find Book anywhere in the trailer. Am I just missing him, or did they not put him in for some reason? I’m sure I’ve read that all of the primary cast came back for the film.

  2. Isn’t Kaylee just one of the cutest/sexiest women ever? Admittedly, part of that may be that she’s about the closest thing to a “clone” of an earlier Whedon character (Willow, of course) who was consistently my favorite on Buffy…but even if I hadn’t had a silly fanboy tv-character crush on Willow, I’m pretty sure I’d have one for Kaylee.

Anyway, thanks for mentioning this show often enough and with high enough praise that it caught my eye. It was well worth it.

Now to see if I can get Prairie to watch the series before the movie comes out…

Imitation, Flattery, and All That Jazz…

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then I suppose I should consider myself flattered — either that, or there’s a rather surprising coincidence going on. Update: Coincidence! See the end of this post for more…

In October of 2003, I dreamed up my “I’m just here to get laid” t-shirt and put it up on CafePress, where it’s sold a whopping…um…five. Maybe.

One of the things about CafePress I’m not terribly fond of is that they don’t offer white-on-black merchandise, so for my birthday on May 3rd of this year, I had a white-on-black version of the shirt custom made. Since then, I’ve worn it around town from time to time, both to the Vogue and to the major festivals (Folklife, Fremont Solstice, and Pride), where it’s gotten a lot of good laughs.

Earlier today, thanks to a comment in Brandon’s LiveJournal (where I’m described very accurately and amusingly as “the kilt wearing skinny dude”) that North Shore Shirts (an offshoot of the local weblog Then You Discover) is selling a shirt that looks very familiar (aside from using a different font and ending with an ellipsis rather than a period). According to the store weblog, their shirt was introduced on May 30th of this year.

Admittedly, my first reaction was to get a little peeved — but then, I’m also running on about three hours of sleep today, and my temper can flare up pretty easily — but wasn’t too long before I just thought it was funny. Now, it is entirely possible that it’s nothing more than a remarkable coincidence that another Seattle weblogger would come up with a near-duplicate idea…but if it isn’t a coincidence, then I’ll settle for flattery.

Besides — they obviously have the ability to actually create and sell these things without resorting to CafePress or the like, which I don’t have the ability to do. A pity, too…after the number of compliments I’ve gotten on the shirt, I was starting to poke around various shirt printing sites to see what it would take to make a batch to sell myself. Looks like North Shore beat me to it!

So — if you think the shirt is funny, and would be satisfied with a fair-to-middling quality black-on-white CafePress version, pick one up here and I’ll get a whole dollar (ooooohhhhh…) for each one ordered. On the other hand, if you’d prefer a high-quality (I’m assuming) white-on-black version (and cheaper than CafePress, to boot), you can pick it up from North Shore Shirts, and I’ll get…um…the satisfaction of helping them out with their sales. Yeah. That’s it! ;)

(Oh, and North Shore…if this is all coincidence, then I like your sense of humor. If it isn’t coincidence, is there any chance I could get an “idea by…” or “inspired by…” link on that shirt’s page?)

Update: Word from Mikey at North Shore is that, as I said was very possible, it’s just a coincidence. She also pointed out that there are at least two other variations of the idea floating around out there.

Guess I’m not as creative as I’d like to think. ;)

Hopefully there’s no hard feelings left behind (I did recommend their shirts over mine, after all)…

MiS Day Two: 2005 Seattle Gay Pride Parade

Day two of the “MiS (Men in Skirts)” weekend has come and gone. Rick, Kirsten, and Kory joined Prairie and I to head up the hill to this year’s Gay Pride parade.

We staked out a spot right about where I was last year, just in front of Seattle Central Community College. Over the past couple years, that’s become my favorite place to set up for the parade — wide sidewalks, so you don’t get too claustrophobic from the crowds if you’re on the sidelines; and a median divider running down the street that I like to hang out on, as it’s a great spot for getting photos as the parade goes by. Chas was just a bit up the street from us, and he came down to say hi before the parade and then again after everything was done.

I always forget how long this parade is. It started right on time (a pleasant surprise for Seattle), and wrapped up three hours later! I ended up filling three of my four Compact Flash cards (one 512Mb, one 256Mb, and one 32Mb) with photos, topping out the day at around 550 total. I’ve culled out about half of those for my Flickr photoset — I didn’t see any “oh wow” shots this time around, but there’s still a lot of fun stuff in there.

www.flickr.com

Once the parade was done, we all went down to Charlie’s for lunch, then split up. Rick went up the hill to the rest of the Pride celebration at Volunteer Park; Kirsten and Kory went off to go shopping, and Prairie and I came back home, as she had to head back out to Ellensburg. I grabbed a nap for a bit after she left, then spent a few hours working on getting photos ready until Kirsten and Kory came back.

After they crashed out for a short nap, the three of us headed back up the hill to hit the Vogue‘s Sunday night fetish night. Bounced around for a bit, saw some people I’d met a while ago but hadn’t seen in a good year or so (Toni and Deandra, and met their friends Kane and Teresa), and then headed back home round about midnight.

And with that, the Men in Skirts weekend is done. I’m blearily making my way through the morning, and the work week is about to begin.

Of course, on the bright side, there’s a three-day weekend coming up next weekend thanks to the Fourth of July….

iTunesLeather” by Amos, Tori from the album Little Earthquakes (1991, 3:12).

MiS Day One

Today was day one of what I’ve dubbed the “Men in Skirts” weekend, with a jaunt out to Golden Gardens Park for the Utilikilts 5th Anniversary party.

Rock Crab, Golden Gardens Park, Seattle, WAPrairie and I had a lot of fun exploring the park. Neither of us had been there before, so we bounced back and forth between the picnic and wandering up and down the beach. While clambering over rock piles and underneath a pier, Prairie got to show me a lot of sea critters that I hadn’t seen outside of aquariums before, from huge starfish to tiny rock crabs that skittered away from us after she kicked over the rocks they were hiding under.

Me, Frisbee, Utilikilts Annivesary Party, Golden Gardens Park, Seattle, WAThe picnic was also quite fun, with really good sausages and other potluck goodies to munch on, and quite a few Utilikiltarians (some of them employees, others, like me, customers and fans) chatting and playing. I spent some time playing frisbee out on the sand with Steven, Jenniviere, and Ben‘s daughter (amusingly, Ben and I know each other from Anchorage — long time ago) until my feet couldn’t take the hot sand anymore.

We ended up bailing out around 4pm, as there were chores to putter with at home (fun things like laundry and a little bit of straightening up for visitors tomorrow). Good day, a park that we’ll definitely be heading back to so we can explore it in a bit more detail, and much fun meeting some of the people behind the Utilikilt empire!

www.flickr.com

iTunesPhorever People (D’s Mellow)” by Shamen, The from the album Phorever People (1992, 4:52).

Shake, rattle, and roll

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

(pause)

“Did you feel that?”

“Yeah…what is that?”

“No idea.”

The entire apartment was shaking, slightly, but very noticeably, about once every second and a half or so. It felt like a small earthquake, except that it was far too regular, and it kept going.

And it seemed to be getting stronger.

I got up, tossed on some clothes, and started to see if it might be coming from somewhere in the apartment building. Someone banging on a wall, maybe? Some late-night work on their apartment?

It was a little stronger on the floor below us — strong enough that the door to the apartment directly below mine was rattling lightly in its frame. As I continued on my way downstairs, it kept feeling a bit stronger. I got to the ground floor and saw a girl from one of the other apartments out in the hall. “Do you feel the building shaking?” she asked.

“Yeah — that’s why I’m up. What’s going on?”

She didn’t know. It seemed to be strongest by the mailboxes. A few moments later another tenant came out of their apartment, then another, and another. Eventually there were eight of us, all wondering just what was going on.

“Oh, I’ve got an idea,” I said. “They’re doing a lot of construction on I-5 this weekend…that’s gotta be it. Some construction equipment pounding the ground for some reason.”

That made sense, and it seemed to be fading a bit, and people started heading back to their apartments. Prairie and I were quite awake by this point, though, so we decided to head out and see if our guess was right. Jim (one of the other tenants, and the one who recognized me earlier this week) came along, and we wandered the two blocks down to the Spring St. bridge over I-5.

Pavement breaking, I-5, Seattle, WASure enough, a few lanes of I-5 were shut down, and a large truck was slowly moving down one lane, a huge contraption on the back sending what must be an insanely heavy metal slab slamming into the pavement again and again, breaking it up to be removed.

We stood on the bridge and watched it for a few moments, feeling the bridge shudder with each drop, marveling at how heavy this thing must be. “You should have brought your camera,” Prairie said. That sounded like a good idea, so we came back, Jim went back to his apartment, I grabbed my camera, and we headed back out to the bridge.

Construction (817 Kb .mov)I took a few shots and a few seconds of video (things like this really are more impressive when you can actually see and hear what’s going on — a still photo just doesn’t give the same impression), and then we headed back home.

The building’s still shaking every few seconds, but it’s not as strong as it was…and now that we know what’s going on, instead of just being somewhat freaked out and envisioning the building foundation suddenly cracking and collapsing, it’s not as disturbing as it was. Prairie’s already crashed out, and I will be as soon as this post goes up.

A bit of an unexpected adventure on a Friday night. Kinda fun, actually.