ich bin ein auslander

damn, the death in vegas album is good.

yes, i know i spelled rhythm wrong above.

I don’t want to get off on a rant here….

but why does Dennis Miller suck now? I used to love him. But that’s not my point. Maybe I’m a bit drunk now. Well… no maybes about it. Nevertheless, I’m pissed off and annoyed and sick of people in general at the moment. I feel a bit like I used to in high school, and I don’t like that one bit.

I’ve been semi-running this group of people called the Web Hermits for almost three years now. A bunch of people like Wendy and myself… people burned out by the corporate machine who went off and started doing their own thing, so they no longer had the built-in social contacts one would have working at a company. So, we all get together for lunch once a week, go drinking, organize other excursions and what not, share our contacts both professional and personal, etc. Which worked alright for a little while, unless you were the guy who was supposed to organize all of the above. Which was me.

I’m tired of it. I have been for awhile, but tonight was the proverbial straw that broke Brian’s back. 90% of these people live 5 minutes away from the bar, no one showed up except for 2 guys that live in the fucking Valley. Everyone complains about everything. We had to cancel lunch this week because no one could make it. For fuck’s sake, you’re all your own bosses. This has been going on for 3 years. Don’t schedule a goddamn meeting for 1pm on a Wednesday.

I can go on and on and on, listing off each petty bullshit thing that has pissed me off, but I won’t. I abdicate the throne I never wanted in the first place. I’m done, stick a fork in me. Someone else can run this bullshit roadshow now, or it can just die the death it deserved months ago.

My new goal is to find new friends - friends that have initiative enough to do things for themselves, and invite us, instead of waiting for us to come up with shit to do, invite them, and then not show up anyway.

Damn, just like high school. I’d really love to actually feel like a grown up someday. Oh yeah, I felt that way last week when writing my goddamn tax checks.

Mmmm…. new Death in Vegas album good. Rapidly becoming one of my favorite bands. Contino Sessions ruled, so far Scorpio Rising is even better, although Liam Fucknut Gallagher is a piss poor replacement for Iggy Pop as a guest vocalist. Still, Dot Allison returns and Hope Sandoval takes a turn.

Comes out Sept 16, at least in the UK. God knows what the US release date will be. You can listen (as I am) to the whole thing courtesy of NME here. Interesting geek side note - part of the registration process includes options to have updates and messages pushed to your cellphone. Cool. Not that they stop you from registering with fake info tho

There are no problems that can’t be solved if you’re willing to be patient or throw money at them. Generally, I’m pretty chintzy with either so I tend to spend a lot of time upset.

Jason helped out with both server issues, so those are nearly wrapped up… axis cam is working with a modem, and the purchase of yet more networking equipment has enabled me to network it with the Powerbook. I am now fully prepared to do mobile webcasting… which I will be doing from Vegas on Tuesday. woohoo!

After Effects plug-in problems semi-solved… works on AE 5.0 in OS 9, but not in AE 5.5 for OS X. So Wendy’ll just have to work off the older version to use those plugins…

Which leaves me with the music system… still no progress there but my stool came in today! Steel and black cloth, pneumatically adjusted so I can easily switch from top to bottom synth… just in time as I’ve recently started actually practicing piano again, rather than just programming and MIDI weirdness. Real performance. I’m crap, but not as crap as I thought I’d be.

Did an hour on the bike, and feeling sweaty but groovy. Even managed to fix one of the problems below - have the Axis cam now successfully working with a modem. Yippee. Tomorrow I deal with all the rest of the problems… of course, the music one is the one I most want to tackle but I keep shoving to the end of the list because it’s not technically work and doesn’t put any money in the bank.

Dave tells me I need a hub to get the Axis to network with the powerbook, which means a) another trip to Comp USA b) spending more money c) another thing to lug to vegas and d) guess I’ll need to buy a power strip too, as it’s the cam, the modem, the powerbook and now the hub will all need to be plugged in to whatever awaits us at the venue.

need marzipan.