Ploafmaster General

Whoa...to follow up the goofy with serious, I give you Raul Midon:

[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynk6W3qM9-w&w=425&h=350])

Holy crap, this is hilarious...and still somewhat music related.

[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56TqnexgzIA&w=425&h=350])

I just read an article about China's continued suppression of all who would have a free society.

Why is it that it's illegal to buy Cuban cigars in America because of trade sanctions, but China has most-favored-nation trade status? What is it about Castro and Cuba that makes them worse than China?

To be sure, Castro's regime still jails dissenters, but how are they worse than China? How do they even approach China's maleficence? And why the hell does the US of A favor one over the other?

Oh yeah, I forgot...business.

Stupid government.

This instrument has a wack paint job, but a dope sound:

[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYLqMViWsws&w=425&h=350])

Jason Kottke has posted a delightful account of his resistance to recent pop culture hype.

Check out the header section of my page and look at the new link - it says "My Netflix Habits."

Click through and see the latest addition to my page. I put a new plugin on my site that allows me to show different feeds from Netflix, and currently I'm showing three: My three most recent films, the movie that's at home, and the next three in the queue.

It's pretty slick, but it's not perfect - it includes the movie that's at home in list of recent films, so at the time of this post you can see "Brick" twice on the page.

I also use a crappy hacked way of displaying multiple queues (or displaying them at all, really) - I added the code to the page.php file in the Wordpress theme, which means that the feeds would essentially show up on every page I create. I'm not worried about this at the moment, however, since I never really use pages for anything else.

Oi. I just spent my entire weekend constructing a shed in my back yard. I mean, pretty much my entire weekend. I was working yesterday from 9:30 until 5:40, and today from 2 until 7:30, after church, lunch, and changing a tire on Val's Jetta.

Thankfully, my incredibly excellent buddies cmae through in spades to help me out. I pretty much owe them all big time. The shed is together, it's solid, and it actually looks pretty nice now that it's complete.

While in retrospect I think I would have built a wooden shed as originally planned, I'm just glad that this sheet metal box holds my lawn mower and other assorted yard implements :-)

Justin Timberlake, courtesy of CNN(?!!?!??). Wow.

I wanted (the album) to look to a time when everything was really sexy...Maybe everybody was coked up, but who cares? It was hot. It was all about sex.

So yeah, YouTube has proved a valuable resource for finding videos of AMAZING musicians. Maybe I'll make this a regular feature?

[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbndgwfG22k&w=425&h=350])

This dude's chops are BOSS.

[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZTziYivOLA&w=425&h=350])

A-check-check-it:

NSA Eavesdropping Program Ruled Unconstitutional

So when do we get criminal cases?  How much more will it take?

Yeah, I should mention that I recently changed the visual theme of my website to one of the WordPress provided themes.  I did this because I was getting really tired of my initial design and it's hideous appearance.  If I ever get to sit down and work on my new design, it'll be a miracle.

Yay-uh!

Alright, I'm typing this entry from my new joint...a Macbook Pro. 2 Ghz. Core Duo with 1 gig of ram and an 80 gig hard drive. Delicious.

I know I'm going to catch some flack from a few of my nerd cohorts, but I feel I made a good choice :-)

So here's what's actually happening:

Sunday evening, I'm heading over to the Richmond Apple store, and I'm buying a MacBook.  It's finally going to happen - I'm switching!

I'm still planning to get the Mac Pro, and I wasn't stating in my earlier post that I was rushing out to buy that tower right away.  That will likely happen around the spring after Leopard comes out and the mighty machine has gone through a revision or two.

Meanwhile, I'll be in Williamsburg this weekend, but my next post should be from the glorious goodness of my new 'pooter!

Alright, Stevie J and co. announced, not surprisingly, the Mac Pro.  And I want one.

The case is the same as the G5 tower in all it's minimalistic metal glory, but inside...well, I'll lay down the config I want...

TWO 2.66 Ghz dual-core 64-bit Xeon processors
2 Gb ram
500 Gb hdd
Wireless/Bluetooth
23" Apple HD monitor
everything else standard, which is still the hotness - nVidia GeForce 7300 GT with 256 Mb of RAM, loads of ports, lots of expansion/upgrade capability, greate software, etc.

Mmmmm...Apple.

So two fantastic things to report:

1. I finally freakin' saw Ozma last night!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Jake, Elizabeth, and I went to the Norva in Norfolk, VA, to catch Ozma playing with the Rentals - wow, what a show.  Ryan from Ozma was not only a freakin' amazing guitar player, but he also played with the Rentals on most of their songs.  And while Matt Sharp can't really sing, I must say that the Rentals were freakin' excellent live.  They've essentially re-tooled most of their old stuff, and it sounds fantastic.  Ozma played Battlescars, which pretty much satiated me :-)

2. Today is day one of the Apple WWDC in San Fran.  This means Stevie J announces the latest and greatest for Apple, and I'll be glued to my screen continuously pressing F5 until I found everything out.  Huzzah!

Yeah, I took down the ads.  They pretty much didn't have anything relevant for my site.

On a seperate note, I've been wicked busy lately, and since Valerie's computer died, I can only maintain my blog at work - not the best idea, so I've been slow to keep up.

Hopefully I'll have my first Apple in a few weeks and I can post more regularly.

Heh heh...yeah.  So I'd been wondering why I couldn't see the Google Ads on my page, and then it struck me...

Adblock for Firefox.  I'd been bolcking the whole Google Page Ads thingy, so I couldn't see it, even on my site.  I took that off for now so I could confirm that it works, but now all I see is a "public service" ad.  It's great to donate to Katrina relief, and all, but does this really mean that there are no relevant ads for my site?

That's wack.

So I'm expirementing with ads on my site - but feel free to ignore them.  It's for something on which I'm working with friends, and we've never used AdSense before.  So my site is the guinea pig :-)

Well that was...ick.  The Czech's mutilated us today, beating the US Soccer team 3-0.

Let's hope our boys can tackle the Italians on Saturday - though I won't be too broken up about it if we don't, since, well...they're Italian :-)

I don't typically follow soccer, but I do find it entertaining.

This year is the World Cup tournemant, and the first game for the US team is against the Czech Republic, Monday, June 12th at noon EST.

I mention this because I'm getting ready to head to Prague, and I'm not quite sure what the mood towards Americans will be if the US happens to best the Czechs in game one.

I'd say I'll root for Italia, but they're in the same group in Stage 1, so either way I could experience some sour looks at the sound of my English...If we win, of course :-)

Afghan donkey bomb plot foiled

It's really hard not to laugh at that...

Holy CRAP!

My crazy lil' bro Nick just got a call (well, my mom got the call, but it was for him) about an audition he did for Evan Almighty, the upcoming sequal to Bruce Almighty.

I don't know what kind of role he'll have, be it extra or walk-on, or maybe one line...but apparently they've been trying to contact him for a while via cell phone, but his battery has been kaput, etc...

Either way, they're filming in the Charlottesville/Crozet area, and he'll be doing something.  I hope it's a visible part, just so I can see my bro on the big screen!

Woot!