I was waffling on whether I should have asked my ex-girlfriend to return “Journey’s Greatest Hits.” I wanted it back when she told me she had it. When I finally listened to it, I wondered why I ever asked for it back. But I think I figured out that at least three of the songs are worth having. Really, the best of the bunch isn’t even a Journey song, it’s “Oh, Sherry” from after Steve Perry was kicked out and went solo. But I also have to chuckle when I hear, “Don’t Stop Believin’,” “Separate Ways,” and “Lovin’, Touchin’, and Squeezin’.”
I listen to my iPod on my walk to and from work and it’s nice to hear silly songs. So here’s the start of my silly commute list:
Song
Group
Chains of Love
Erasure
A Little Respect
Erasure
Stop!
Erasure
Drama!
Erasure
Star
Erasure
Chorus
Erasure
Love to Hate You
Erasure
Breath of Life
Erasure
What Do I Know
Josh Clayton-Felt
Don’t Stop Believin’
Journey
Separate Ways
Journey
Lovin’, Touchin’, and Squeezin’
Journey
Love Will Tear Us Apart
Joy Division
These Days
Joy Division
Too Shy
Kajagoogoo
Break Out
Swing Out Sister
I haven’t made it very far through the alphabet, and I started with “E”. Also, Joy Division isn’t all that silly, but it’s good walking music anyway.
My dinner last night didn’t sit well, and I ended up having odd nightmares. The first one was a short, balding man in a turtleneck (George Costanza perhaps?) telling me that I was fired. The second had something to do with shooting guns at people. Or maybe zombies. I don’t know. It was about 10°F warmer as well. Ah, well, dinner at Ringside is worth it.
I’m probably not the only one who overate tonight. My sister just celebrated her 8th wedding anniversary tonight at the Paris Restaurant.
What was my excuse? I was at work late (only 2-3 hours later than usual, thank goodness) reaching a minor milestone. Afterward, three of us headed out for dinner and I suggested the Ringside where they have a great deal on a three-course dinner before 5:30PM and after 9PM. Unfortunately, the menu changed a bit and I was unable to get my usual — Caesar salad, filet mignon, and creme brulee — for $25. The filet mignon is off of the specials menu but has been replaced by prime rib. Not a bad switch. My young co-workers had no trouble finishing the dinner, and we also had onion rings. The youngest used his 20-year-old’s appetite to finish off onion rings, a 24oz Porterhouse, and sorbet. That 24oz steak was impressive, and he had no trouble finishing it.
Once again, I started upgrading some software after 10PM. And I ran into troubles. However, the problem is one that has been in the software for a while and I kind of knew what to look for. So Gallery has been upgraded and even has security updates but the developer didn’t think it was important to send out a notification. Or maybe the email was stuck due to a spam filter. Who knows?
When the weather is nice in Oregon, everyone is outside. I saw several neighbors, some guys from high school (my sister’s high school anyway), and my friend Craig says Susan Anton was in his pub just across the street from the library. I mention the library because I was there today and was that close to celebrity! Instead of going back outside, I read a Jesse Stone (by Robert Parker) mystery today. I finished it in a couple of hours. Fluff mysteries are fun to read sometimes.
The closest thing to a date I had last year was a trip to the Mt. Angel Oktoberfest with a neighbor. In fact, it was the closest thing I’ve had to a date since I broke up with my girlfriend the week before 9/11/2001. Today we went out to breakfast. Thus, I’ve made it halfway to my New Year’s resolution. If, of course, you count the breakfast as a date. I had to leave so I could help my friend John with his yacht. It turns out he just needed me to crawl under the fly bridge-thingy to disconnect some wires. It didn’t take very long.
I’m thinking of ordering some old CDs from BMG and I’d like somebody to give me some help. I mean, this is the third time I’ve mentioned Rob Swift because that’s the only cool CD I’ve bought in years. On BMG I’ve got the following CDs in my “Shopping Cart”:
Artist
Album
Note
Various
Living in Oblivion 2-4
80’s cheese-music compilations
The Psychedelic Furs
Greatest Hits
Pet Shop Boys
Alternative
a CD I lost
Duran Duran
Singles Boxset 1981-1985
I miss the remixes of “Planet Earth” and “Rio”
Various Artists
Red Hot & Rio
I’ve lost TWO copies of this CD already
New Order
Retro
Just because I have all the other New Order CDs
Control Machete
Artiller&iaccent;a Pesada, Presenta
Just trying something new
Fountains of Wayne
Welcome Interstate Managers
A suggestion from my sister
It may be lucky that the web site is broken and won’t allow me to buy these CDs rignt now.
Honestly, I finally have an iPod with 5091 songs (14.8 days worth) but I’ve been listening to Erasure‘s “Pop! The First 20 Hits” repeatedly. I think I should break out into something else, but not just The Pet Shop Boys. Maybe Journey.
I meant to go to sleep early last night but I saw that there was a new version of ip_filter (version 4.1) and foolishly decided to try installing it. Fortunately, I was able to uninstall it and had an older version of ip_filter sitting around. Unfortunately, there are a lot of versions of ip_filter that don’t run well on my SPARC. It’s all kind of iffy. Anyway, the version I had was broken and I was off the net from around 11:30PM until 7PM today. Not that big a deal except I get a fair amount of junk email and my sister’s web site gets a lot of hits.
So, there you go. Things are back to normal, or geek-normal anyway.
And I figured out why the Pet Shop Boys CDs were so cheap. They aren’t as good as I had hoped. DJ Rob Swift was a great find.
As a guy, I’m not into shopping. It’s not about the getting, it’s about having the toys. Well, I suppose there are lots of things I thought about buying for a long time before I actually bought them, but it’s not something that interests me for very long. So when I went to buy CDs today, I thought it would be easy. But then I found out that a used double CD was $16 at CD Warehouse. If it’s scratched, it’s $12. That’s a little more than I thought it would be. So I went to Music Millennium and bought new CDs. Two Pet Shop Boys CDs were $11 each and DJ Rob Swift — they were playing the CD while I was there — was $14. And all I wanted to do was buy one Pet Shop Boys CD.
I guess all the super-cheap internet CD prices are gone.
I guess I’ll have to give them more than a couple of days. I called my prescription in on Friday and they called my home phone instead of my cell phone. I walked in expecting nothing and I got nothing. But they did tell me to come back on Monday. So today I went in and they’d called my home phone again. The pharmacy tech was a nice guy (as are most of them) and told me they didn’t have my cell phone on record. But I gave my cell phone number to the surly lab tech late last year. Well, I guess surly is as surly does.
I think I’ve decided not to keep trying to find the Pepsi with the iTunes caps. I saw the Pepsi delivery guy this morning and he hasn’t seen the caps, either. If he hasn’t seen them, I’m sure they’re not in town yet. Maybe they’re all in bigger markets. Well, I’ve been meaning to buy more CDs now that I have a job anyway.
I’ve had cramps in my thighs that interrupted my sleep, and Saturday morning I had a cramp in my calf. I’ve heard that my Gleevec can cause cramps, but I also get cramps if I quit running. I’ve been just walking 35-40 minutes to work or back or both. That doesn’t seem to be cutting it.
I had to get up early this morning to check out some property my friend Larry is thinking of buying. It’s way up in the hills above Woodland, Washington. Now why would anyone want to increase their commute to over an hour each way? For Larry it’s because it’s a good site for ham radio antennas, way up on a hilltop. I’d much rather let someone else buy the property and visit them to use the radio.
Oh, and on a bad note, my sister did NOT get a ‘flu shot and she either has the ‘flu or the stomach ‘flu. Either way, she’s feeling poorly. I hope she feels better soon.
Well, my blood is overshooting the target range and my white blood cell and platelet counts are a little low. I guess this is expected. The bad news is that my sister isn’t a match for a bone marrow transplant. My doctor seems to think that the Gleevec is good enough that I don’t need to be worried. I hope he’s right!
Today the whining of the guy who has too many songs on his hard disk consists of the complaint that there is no way of easily transferring songs from one computer to another. I suppose this is to keep you from stealing music, but sheesh. I just want to move everything to a new hard drive. How hard is this? Very hard.
Oh, well. I’m too sleepy to think about this much more today.
