Vintage KISS

A bunch of neat photos, including a live Wicked Lester. Check the flowers on Peter's rack tom.

AMX/3

This would've changed everything. AMC would probably still be around if the AMX/3 hadn't've been killed. I've seen a couple pictures of it before, but never knew it's story. Damned good lookin' car—has a bit of a Miura profile up front. Who knows, maybe I could've been driving a modern AMC right now. Well, not right this second—that'd be dangerous.

Paul Newman Smashes Donkey Kong Record!

Ha ha ha! Eat it, Greg! Ha ha! :)

Steve McQueen Almost Beat Mario

Fucking amazing. The team of Steve McQueen and Peter Revson almost beat Mario Andretti in the 1970 12 Hours of Sebring race. That would've been cool. Oh, and Steve had a broken foot in a cast while he raced. Some fantastic photos there. Loving that guy's blog.

Keith Moon

Here's a neat article about Keith, including a great photo of his groovy drums, 2nd picture from the top. I like the 2 arms connecting the 2 bass drums to help keep them in place, and I'm sure he needed all the help he could.

Great T–shirts

T–shirts with stuff on them have always been my favorite form of dress and personal expression. I think my favorite of those is the "Who the fuck's Mick Jagger" shirt. The Nugent/Denver one is pretty good too.

I just found that blog, but will be checking out much, much more of it. It looks really good and is full of shit I like to look at.

Cherry Wainer and Don Storer

Here are two people I've never heard of; two people that make some really tasty sounds. And she has some fantastic arms. I bet the rest of her was also nice and toned. I like their version of Brubeck's Take Five, where Don shows his chops. Some of the videos have shots her her feet, also getting a great workout on the pedals. What a feisty little number she was. I dig her matching Leslies and Hammond with what looks like pearl laminate, perhaps from a drum company.

Shooting Star

I wonder why I never heard a Shooting Star song. I remember reading their name in, probably, Creem and stuff. Andy mentioned them tonight when he and Kim & I went out for supper. Kind of a neat mix of Kansas (they're from Kansas City), Bad Company, Triumph, and a little early Journey. I dug it enough to buy their 2nd album and a few tracks off the 1st.

Very interesting drum sounds. The toms are very period perfect; single–headed, medium–loose tension, sounds like plain ol' Ambassadors, maybe a bit of tape to control some ring in the studio. I've grown to dig that sound. It's kinda sucky, but a good kinda sucky, like the way a little ol' underpowered tube amp will break up when you push it too hard.

Back Boobs

Augh! Sorry about your eyes.

Music Rights

Cripes. After telling somebody about the Gumby vs. Killdozer movie Brent and I made, I went through all the trouble of ripping the DVD (thanks Brent) with Handbrake and uploading it to YouTube. I'd done a director's cut in iMovie HD and added new video and audio f/x, along with closing credits and music (theme from S.W.A.T.). After it finally got uploaded to YouTube I checked it out and found that they'd disabled the audio because it contained audio that was unlicensed. I simply cannot stand music licensing bullshit. So, I'm uploading it elsewhere. But it's amazing that YouTube's servers contain algorithms that look through every movie that gets uploaded and compares it with all the known licensed songs in the world. Must be the same algorithm that the Shazam iPhone app uses to recognize a short clip of a song.

Death Bimmer

One of my favorite models I built was Rommel's Rod. I was awarded this BMW in Forza 3 and wondered what Rommel would use today for zipping along the Autobahn. I took the photo and named it Naziwagon, then went to upload it. Sorry, "nazi" must be a naughty word cuz it didn't get through their lame profanity filter. What the fuck? Do they also think "Jew" is a derogatory term? What about "Mexican"? So I named it phonetically, Notsi Wagon. Take that you bastards.

Modern Superbird

Here's an interesting modification of a new Challenger to make it sorta like an old Daytona/Superbird. I like it lots, except for the stupid smiling opening in the bottom half of the nose cone. Makes it look like some gay ass Mazda or some other Jap car that runs on unicorn farts.

New Tunes

We worked up Everybody Wants You by Billy Squire and Fox on the Run by Sweet today. Nobody can sing as high as that guy in Sweet, so Emily's doing those notes with a nice sawtooth wave, which is the same as the rest of the synth parts. They'll be welcome replacements for some of the really old shit in our song list.

Sims 3

Woohoo! Another time sink. As if Sims 2 wasn't enough, now there's even more stuff for your Sims to do in their day–to–day lives. They can go fishing, play guitar (♫Forget all about that macho shit, and learn how to play guitar♫), send the fish they catch away to have them mounted (I have a minnow on my wall), plant seeds and tend the plants, all sorts of shit.

Squirrel Lamp

I was saying to Kim just the other day—I swear to god it was just the other day—we don't have nearly enough squirrel lamps around the house. If only they weren't so danged expensive. If only there were some way to produce them ourselves… like as a hobby in the evenings, when I'm tired from doing business all day.

Good Gig

That was a lot of fun. Seems to be a bar that has lots of regulars, sorta neighborhoody. Played my ass off. It was hot in there. Had to put my fan on medium. That's how I know it's hot. Kim & I and Emily did Perkins afterward. Had 12 pancakes, 12 omelets, 12 cups of coffee, 12 waitresses. Not really, but 1 person will get that. Got to bed at 4:30. Woke at 7:30. Fuck, I hate that. Had a short nap at some point during the laying–around–watching–TV–all–day. I did manage to make my way out to the garage and drove to Famous Dave's for a couple pork sammiches for supper. Good meat. The problem with that place though, is that they felt the need to make everything hot. The mac & cheese has jalapeño. Why?? I don't consider sweating and having my nose run an enjoyable meal.

Forza Motorsport 3

Wheeee! This rocks.


Sideways in a Ram SRT–10.


Tried driving a dumb NASCAR car. Oh no! Curves! Promptly got upside down. Worthless car. But I did notice these wires and connector. So much detail in the cockpits:



The end of the long New York back straight comes up a lot quicker when you're in a Veyron. Somebody give me a push.

All-Night Movies, Some Easy Conversation

This waterbed warehouse commercial is a weird mix of '70s porn, mellow hippy laid backishness, and a little creepy sex offender. I'm not sure if he's trying to offer great deals to single women or to bait them into his store late at night.

Crappy Tech Support

We use VISE X to build our installers. VISE X was supposedly a total rewrite from the old Installer Vise that had been around for ages. Well, it really wasn't a rewrite, because the same odd UI bugs are still in it. Anyhoo, I reported a bug to them again about it not being able to remove all the compressed data from the project file. Rather than asking for the project file and saying they'd look into it to see exactly why the command was failing, they just said that nobody else has ever reported it, and then added his opinion that I should export the project to their xml format, and that we should not store the project in source control, but store the xml file instead. Bwuh?! That would mean I'd need to import the xml into a new project each time I built an installer. And you can't go through the normal open/save/close channels with the xml files, since those only support the project document. What the fuck kind of user friendliness is that?

I've never had such crappy tech support from a company that should be savvy to the way developers work. After all, developers of software are the people who buy their installer makers. I also suggest that they stop storing the compressed data (it compresses all the data that goes in the installer, like our app and its support files) in the project file. They should store it in an external file, must like the way any compiler does. The compressed data should not be part of the project, it's only part of the final product. It's ephemeral. He said they could not easily do that to solve my problem. Well of course they can't do it real quick like, but they should do it for a future major release. Maybe one where they fix all the stupid UI bugs and really old looking UIs.

Nothing pisses me off more than tech support that argues, fails to offer any real help, and gives his opinion on how I should be using their product.

The Latest

Picked up Cheap Trick's The Latest last night. Just about done with the first listen, and man, did they pick a sucky mastering engineer. It's way too compressed. Makes them sound like some no–talent pop act. To make sure I wasn't nuts, I opened it in Cacophony to look at the waveform and yup, it's mostly black—very few valleys. That's too bad. There are some great songs on it, but the overall sound is crappy. Track 2, When the Lights are Out, even has some weird synth that plays along with the lead licks that makes it sounds like there are heavy digital compression artifacts, as if they recorded it, converted it to some really low bit rate mp3, and put that on the record. It almost hurts my ears.

The good news is that the new Wolfmother album is fan–fucking–tastic! I also got a new Drive-by Truckers release called The Fine Print, which is a collection of rare stuff. And 2 older Rammstein albums that I didn't have and the brand new one. Haven't spun those yet. Heh, iTunes didn't even use the non–porno version of the album cover.

Forza Motorsport 3

Woohoo! I forgot about the release date. Ran to Best Buy to get it tonight. Fuckin' cool! I thought in cockpit view would be hard to drive, but it's very lifelike (sorta) after you get used to it. The new tracks are amazing, and a nice choice a new cars, although I still wish they'd put in some old Chaparrals and stuff like that. Driving the trucks is novel, but old CanAm cars woulda been much better. Even the 917 car from hell instead of so many variations of the 911. The physics engine seems much better. The cars don't seem to get butt–loose on a whim, easier to steer with the throttle when getting a little sideways around a curve. Taking the Bugatti Veyron out on the Le Mans track is amazing. On the long straight, you quickly hit 200mph (and you get an award thingy for that) and around 240 by the end of it. I know what I'll be doing this week.

In the Navy

Join the Navy. Be a dork with a cheesy mustache and a cool boat. I dig hydrofoils.

Well, Can You?

One of my favorite ad campaigns were these from Camel. This is from Cycle magazine, February 1975. I always like it when they have a small outline "key" illustration for a larger photo, so you can match up the people. That's good readin'!

Gerbil Vest?

More people should take their gerbils with them, and I don't mean like Richard Gere.

That's Service!

Can you imagine getting poolside TV repair service these days? I couldn't even get BP to credit me for the $29 late fee they charged me. Fuckers. Idiots. Who do they think they are, record company executives? I'm never late with a payment, but this one sat on my desk a little too long, got sent the day before they "late date". Oh, plus they tacked on the finance charges that I normally never have to pay because I always pay the full amount on all my accounts.

Looks like the part of the N. Kostner Ave. where that was delivered to is no longer a street.

Brides of Blood

This movie must've been so horrible, that the guy who made it decided to draw up his own hand–made posters and give away engagement ring sets. Must've had his 9–year old daughter help him with the lettering (see "starring") .

Ethernet Woes

The Mac mini in the stereo cabinet seems slow to make initial connections. Like if we go to a web page, it'll take 5 seconds or more before it starts loading anything. Streaming videos can sometimes be slow too. It's connected via Ethernet (along with a couple other components) to a switch that's connected to an AirPort Express. I felt the urge to connect the whole mess directly to the main router via Ethernet instead of having the AirPort in between there, which slows things down as packets are received and re–sent. And I wanted to replace all the CAT5 cabling in the house with CAT6 to help achieve the 1000baseT speeds that all my Macs and hardware is capable of using. So I went to Microcenter to get some cable. They don't seem to sell any raw cable, so I had to buy a 50' cable with ends on it. I cut off a hunk to go from the router to where the Ethernet jack is in the den. When going to wire a new end on, I noticed that the order was different than CAT5 cables. WTF? I assume that as long as the wires come out the same on each end, it shouldn't matter. I'd wired the jack like a CAT5 cable, so I had to make sure I wired the other end the same once I got it out through the wall in the family room.

Getting it there was another matter entirely. Luckily the holes I drilled through the bottom plate from the basement were big enough to get the cable through, but getting it up and into the box was turning into an ordeal. I worked for an hour from the top and the bottom with fish tape and different wires trying to hit the hole I couldn't see. I finally said fuck this and bought myself a new tool. I hadn't bought a tool in quite some time. I got that Milwaukee inspection camera I drooled over when I first saw it. That helped a bunch, although I thought it was supposed to include little hook and magnet attachments you could put on the end to retrieve things, but it didn't. It came with a 12V driver though. What, are cordless drivers so commonplace these days that you get one with everything? I ended up wrapping a piece of #12 wire around the snake, extending about 1" beyond the tip, then was able to guide that up through the hole in the box.

The other thing that bugged me is that the image you see onscreen is flipped vertically (or maybe rotated 180°, and I don't see a way to flip it right side up. I don't get that at all. Who the fuck can think upside down when it comes to moving a camera? Gotta hit the forums and see if there's a hidden setting.

And after all that, my fucking wiring job didn't work. The cable that I ran through the house is able to work in one direction (if I hook it up so it sends from the family room end), but it doesn't work at all when hooked up as planned. No green lights on the switch or anything. Arg. So I just went back to the AirPort way. At least I got a cool new tool out of the all–day job.