A friend of mine tagged me on Facebook with a ‘25 Random’ note where you are supposed to post 25 random songs that come up on your music player. In my case, the iPod Touch. I love chaos and having my library on shuffle, I hardly ever listen to specific albums or artists when listening to my iPod at work. The results fascinate me to no end, and I’ve done a few more of these for comparative purposes. There are 2493 songs currently loaded in my iPod so this would be a 1% sample size.

1. I Need You Tonight – ZZ Top
2. Mess With People – Ani DiFranco/Utah Phillips
3. Aero Zeppelin – Nirvana
4. Esther Be The One – ZZ Top
5. People Are Strange – The Doors
6. Karallanta (The Bare Tree) – Atmospheres: Latin Adventure
7. Scuzz Boots – Sugar Ray
8. Hips Don’t Lie – Shakira
9. With A Little Help From My Friends – The Beatles
10. Right Direction – Sugar Ray
11. Blood Makes Noise – Suzanne Vega
12. [Untitled Hidden Track] – Polygon Window
13. Solo Hago Reggae – Chilito Camacho
14. Smile – Elastica
15. Kling Klang, Klocken Slar – Ana Laan
16. I’d Die for You – Bon Jovi (there’s one from me “don’t judge me folder”!)
17. Quoth – Polygon Window
18. Sombra de Ti – Shakira
19. 100% Dundee – The Roots
20. Chorus and the Ring – R.E.M.
21. DMV – Primus (Dave, Primus overlap!)
22. Powertrip – Monster Magnet
23. Scar Tissue – Red Hot Chili Peppers
24. Wet My Bed – Stone Temple Pilots
25. It Could Be Sweet – Portishead

“Queen of Light took her bow, And then she turned to go,
The Prince of Peace embraced the gloom, And walked the night alone.

Oh, dance in the dark of night, Sing to the morning light.
The dark Lord rides in force tonight, And time will tell us all.

Oh, throw down your plow and hoe, Rest not to lock your homes.

Side by side we wait the might of the darkest of them all.

I hear the horses’ thunder down in the valley below,
I’m waiting for the angels of Avalon, waiting for the eastern glow.

The apples of the valley hold, The seeds of happiness,
The ground is rich from tender care, Repay, do not forget, no, no.
Dance in the dark of night, sing to the morning light.

The apples turn to brown and black, The tyrant’s face is red.

Oh war is the common cry, Pick up your swords and fly.
The sky is filled with good and bad that mortals never know.

Oh, well, the night is long, the beads of time pass slow,
Tired eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow.

The pain of war cannot exceed the woe of aftermath,
The drums will shake the castle wall, the ringwraiths ride in black, Ride on.

Sing as you raise your bow, shoot straighter than before.
No comfort has the fire at night that lights the face so cold.

Oh dance in the dark of night, Sing to the morning light.
The magic runes are writ in gold to bring the balance back. Bring it back.

At last the sun is shining, The clouds of blue roll by,
With flames from the dragon of darkness, the sunlight blinds his eyes.

Ooh, Bring it back, Bring it back…”

Bulls on Parade

I wish I could understand. It doesn’t make much sense to me. I assume (I know, I know) that my elected officials (and their appointees) are smart, qualified and looking out for the little guy. Jesus I’m stupid.

This whole bailout thing is crap. I mean, from a fundimental level it’s crap. If the free market and deregulation are such good things then how did we end up in this mess? I read lots of semi-conflicting stuff about how bad it is, or how bad it isn’t. Don’t get me wrong, giving away the kind of money they are talking about seems like unprecedented stupidity to me.

What makes it even worse for me is that I can’t really identify with either side on this. I’m not lossing my ass on Wall Street because I bought up portions of bad home loans made to people who were never going to be able to replay them. I’m not a homeowner who bought ‘as much house as I could get’ under the assumption that property values could only go up for the next 15 years.

Sure, gas is expensive. Food prices have gone up some what. My daughter is too young for me to worry about putting her through college at the moment. But these assholes on the news keep saying how without freeing up the credit crunch, people won’t be able to do things like get loans for cars, or credit to charge things they can’t aford at the moment anyway. So I just don’t get it, because I just don’t feel it I guess.

Here is a miserable self indulgent post for the day…

Happy birthday to me!

And I’m totally grumpy because I have a sore throat which didn’t let me sleep pretty much at all last night. So I’m in a totally shitty mood. Bah, humbug, grumble, grumble.

Here is today’s disturbing fact…the US Terrorist Watch List has now crossed over the 1 million name mark.

Obviously you will find more terrorists if you just keep making bigger piles of data to sift through. Your odds of finding statically rare events always increase by increasing the size of your data set. Oh wait, only if you have an amazingly accurate system to detect them. Otherwise you just get a jump in your false positives.

A safer America through the magic of the false positive!

But I guess we are all on the watch list now that the Congress has seen fit to ‘overhaul‘ the FISA laws.

Oh, and boo to Barack Obama for voting for this pile of shit.

Well sweet roller skating Jesus.

It seems as though someone hasn’t been posting to their blog. Life has been pretty good actually, I’m really enjoying the Spring. We’ve been going to the Zoo a lot on the weekends, trying to do some trail walking, and now that the pool is open I think my daughter is going to nag me to death until she can just live there. Work has been pretty good and I’m really just enjoying my life at the moment as much as I can. I’ve been trying to cook more. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s too bad that everything doesn’t magically turn out right on the first try.

Nothing much more to report other than I’m pretty happy and it feels great. Next week the wife and I are getting to have day to ourselves and are very much looking forward to that!

On February 22^nd my daughter and I flew to Quito Ecuador to join my wife. Traveling by yourself with a 3 year old is a super good time. I highly recommend it to everyone. It’s not bad enough that you have to (pointlessly) remove your shoes and dare not have any liquids on your person when you try to cross the security screen. You might as well remove your laptop and portable DVD player. Oh and the kid’s shoes, cause if you are going to be evil you might as well be really, really evil and hide stuff in the kid’s shoes. Then you can feel like all the King’s Horses while trying to put all that shit back together and manage a 3 year old. Super fun. Our first fight was slightly delayed because of weather, but she did get a huge kick out of watching the plane being sprayed down with de-icer while we were sitting inside it.

The second leg of the trip from Chicago to Miami things went pretty well until we landed. I have flown through Miami quite a few times over the years and I believe, without a doubt, that it is my least favorite airport in the world. It seems like, almost without exception, every time I’ve flown through there that my plane has to wait for a gate to park at. So while we were waiting for our gate, the people in the row behind us fire up their cell phones, which start ringing almost instantly. The conversation goes something like this:

“Hey. No, everything’s fine. Why? No shit? Really? Wow. Let me see if I can see anything.” Pause. “Yeah, oh wow. Yeah, there is a bunch of helicopters back there and emergency vehicles all over the place. No, no. We are totally safe. I’ll call you back when we get inside the airport.”

Obviously at this point I start looking out the window myself. It’s pretty much just like he described. There are like 5 or 6 helicopters just hanging in the air and lots of emergency vehicles with flashing lights. I look back over the seat at the guy like WTF? and he says “A plane was going to come in on an emergency landing. It’s all over the news.” I send a quick SMS to the wife, something like “Not our plane. We are safe and fine.” Because who knows what she’s going to hear on the news. Some great keywords like: Miami, airplane, Chicago, emergency. Good times.

The leg from Miami to Quito was much less exciting. However, landing it Quito (dark or not) is pretty exciting. The city runs north/south in a valley and the airport is in the middle of the city. It really seems like you are just going to crash into the city while landing, and apparently the runway is a little short of planes of the size we were flying in (757). I’ve never had a plane come to such a sudden (and semi-violent) stop. I was totally thrown forward in my seat when we came to a stop.

So, I survived another trip deep into the heart of the Tribe. Over all it was a good trip, work-wise. Most of our challenges were of the straight forward, Dilbert type.

We ate amazingly well, and I hope this continues to be a recurring theme of our trips. The Reading Terminal Market, across the street from our hotel, rules so completely that I wish I could just sleep in there to make it that much easier to get my meals. The list of yummy this time includes: By George!, Kamal’s Middle Eastern Specialties and Dutch Eating Place.  While there we also tried an Afghan restaurant as well as a Moroccan  restaurant. Both were super yummy, and I had no idea you could do that with pumpkin, but wow!

I also have a few foto highlights from my trip, including a special pilgrimage to the Amtrak train station, but more on that later

While we were there I also had my first hands on introduction to the Nintendo Wii. I can see why everyone wants one of these evil little devices. They are a lot of fun, and very social for a video game console. We had a great time playing it in the command center after all the ‘real work’ was done and we were just babysitting recovery efforts.

I even watched my first Super Bowl since I was about…12 years old? *yawn* I was actually an exciting game in terms of being tightly controlled by both teams I think, but I’m just not a fan of organized sporting events. Tom Petty even managed to be pretty lame, playing of course the cream of mass consumption and predictably ending with ‘Running down a Dream.’ Somebody paid good money for that 4 year degree so they could figure out that one!

As I get ready to head to Philly again for our bi-annual disaster recovery test, I cannot help but to think of the fictional Jem’Hadar.

“I am First Omet’iklan, and I am dead. As of this moment, we are all dead. We go into battle to reclaim our lives. This we do gladly, for we are Jem’Hadar. Remember, victory is life.”

- Omet’iklan

It’s funny, most of my new co-workers have been asking me how I like the fall weather and such. For whatever reason, it only sticks in their brain that I’m from Arizona (even though I only lived there for 6 months) and not that I’m from Iowa (how many years did I live there?). Fall weather and the pending winter are nothing new to me in the least.

And, true be told, I love the fall. I love the reminder which fall represents. I love the change of colors. My daughter noticed that the tree outside her window lost all it’s leaves. I love that too. The warm sunny days, the clear and crisp days, even the gray and wet days. Fall is a wonderful time of year!

We will be heading to Iowa over the Thanksgiving Holiday so I’m sure I’ll have at least one story to share after that adventure…