77062441

Pink Martini was excellent! Definitely one of the best shows I’ve been to. Aside from the show, there was an interesting moment during intermission when all of the older symphony going folk were looking out of the big Blumenthal window out onto the Speed Street crowd. I couldn’t help feeling like we were looking out on to a wildlife enclosure at a zoo or game reserve. There was a big difference in the two cultures.

Sony Japan has some NICE car stereo systems. Like this one.

New KHeavy soon. Industry v2. Old v1 site here.

76756084

The damned Neon finally drove me to a new car. 2003 Hyundai Tiburon GT V6. It’s puuuuurrdy!

Thanks for the mention Robbie, but I’m not sure how I’m going to pay for it yet … guess I’ll figure it out when I get the bill.

Apple did a speed bump on their iBook line. It’s not enough, IMHO. They should keep it in line with the iMac, but then it would top their PowerBooks. Any speed G3 is too little to run OSX. Instead of making the OS faster, they are just hitting it with GPU acceleration, RAM, and processor cycles. Sigh. Try again.

76542421

Amway == Quixtar

I met a guy while in line at Mel’s Subs the other day at lunch. We started chatting and that I mentioned what I do for a living, i.e. it’s not what I went to school for. Not that it makes my job a bad one. Suday evening, I get a call from the guy (he looked me up! creepy). Said he had an ecommerce thing going and was looking for some help with it and would I meet him for lunch? Ok, I met with him. He wants me to go to a seminar next week and hear all about this wonderful unique business opportunity. A Google search turns up a lot of information on this cult/business. Seems that Amway isn’t very proud of it’s own name. Funny.
I don’t respect ’em enough to link ’em.

Wired has a few articles on Quixtar.

76493093

Watched the bootleg copy of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones on Saturday night and I learned something. When you watch a “summer special effects blockbuster” in really grainy blurry quality, it completely wipes out all of the CG and lets you concentrate on the story … or complete lack of it. This movie sucks. But Yoda kicks serious ass. I guess I’ll still see it in a theater to watch the effects.

76396008

I havn’t looked at Chapter3 in a long time. Niiiiice.

That’s Our Busch

A few years ago I head a singer with a voice that could purify Satan. Tara Busch was doing karaoke at a Bucket Party in Charlotte … her voice was haunting. After I picked myself up off of the floor, I went to a show (sponsored by the local teen radio station, 106.5, bleh!) to hear her band (Sheva) play. Well, it was just her singing and another girl on a synth. Only lasted about 20 minutes, but it was heaven. I have been unsuccessfully looking to see them play for a while now, then I open Creative Loafing to a story about her. She’s now in Whales as the singer of a down-tempo lounge band (my favorite genre along with trip-hop): Dynamo Dresden. A Google search turned up this page at the BBC. I couldn’t get most of it to play (Real sucks!), but the one song (Playtime) wasn’t that bad. I’m starting to sound obsessed.

76312644

From this story on CNN: “An Irish priest who has repeatedly stated he does not believe Jesus Christ was the son of God has resigned.”

Damn! It’s about time something like this happened. Xtianity needs to rexamine its core foundations. Read this little article on his web site, it’s good. And if you’re in a thoughtful mode, browse Acharya S’s web site also. Her mailing list is really interesting also.