Jared’s Blog

1. Flash FXP - great FTP client, does queuing, has a site manager, drag and drop transfers, caching, tons of options. Is it sad my most used app is a FTP client?
2. World of Warcraft - they call it War-crack for a reason. Maybe this is more sad.
3. Dreamweaver 8 - I moonlight as a web developer, this program is open alot. The sad thing is, I use it mostly because it’s and integrated editor and ftp client, the syntax highlighting, and the autocompletion.
4.  VLC - I watch a lot of videos, what can I say. This thing plays it all without having to download a single codec.
5. Tag & Rename - This is how I keep my large music collection sane. As soon as some new music gets on my computer, it get’s tagged with this. Most of the time all the information is available online and you can just do a batch tag from an online source. A couple clicks and you’ve tagged and renamed and entire album.

The Hammer and Blades tour came through MN on Friday with Project 86 headlining and The Showdown, August Burns Red, Schema, and Truth Has Died opening.

I followed the proper channels for getting on the guest list through Decoy, but apparently somewhere, someone dropped the ball. Again. What’s worse is there really isn’t a recourse for me. I could talk to my Decoy contact, but there’s not really anything he can do. And I’m sure he talked to the right person. Usually the fallout comes with the record label.

Now I wouldn’t imagine anyone from Tooth and Nail or any other record label that has stiffed me in the past (*ahem, cough* Atlantic *ahem*) is reading this, but if you are, take note. It is embarrassing, and not fun, to go to a show, tell them you’re on the guest list and then to have them search over it multiple times and not find your name. Please spare me the trouble of asking to get off work early so I can cover said show.

Aside from the little mishap at the door, the rest of the night was relatively good. I was surprised to learn that there were 2 more opening bands than I expected. Unfortunately, neither were something to get excited about. Rick really liked Schema and picked up their CD after the show.

I had been waiting to see The Showdown for over a year now, and unforunately I was disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, their material from A Chorus of Obliteration was stellar and I loved it. Their new stuff, however, was crap. There was not one screamed vocal or one double bass run. In fact, they pretty much went southern rock with a little heavier edge. I just about cried every time they played a new song. Well, that’s not quite true. I was really just waiting for the heavy parts to kick in, but they never did. So it looks like there’s one less band I have to care about in the future. I honestly can’t blame them for changing their sound. What they want to do with music is their choice, but I’ll miss their old style.

One band I knew would not disappoint was August Burns Red. I’d heard two things about these guys. Their live show is great and they’re really young. i don’t know if it was the fact that this Christian club we were in didn’t allow moshing, but things could’ve been taken up another notch or two. Still though, August Burns Red was the highlight of my night. I only wish I would’ve had some extra cash to buy a t-shirt.

I’m not a Project 86 fan really. I’ll listen to them, but I don’t get excitied about them. Rick, on the other hand, used to be into them a lot. I don’t think he is as much now though. Regardless, I couldn’t help thinking back to about 5 years ago. Rick and I were standing at the Quest across the street from where Project 86 was opening for P.O.D. It’s funny how much has changed, yet how many things are still the same.

Instead of dealing with the underage crowd, Rick and I opted to go up to the balcony for the end of the show. Project 86 played about 50 min with their encore which was longer than I expected. I was really surprised that they were the only band to go on the Christian preaching track. Their lead singer really seemed to like Minneapolis though. Many times he iterated that they love to play here and they wish every night could be like it is in Minnesota. Then again, they probably say that every night.

The entire night seemed to have kind of a weird vibe. Maybe it was my rush to get out of work, the door mishap, or the fact we were in a Christian club. Personally, I am a little weirded out by religious people. They tend to be very accepting without much caution. Personally, I tend to be skeptical of people until I get to know them. The other side of it is, those people tend to be really nice and accepting of you in hopes of recruiting another member of their religion. It’s sort of the same feeling you get when a bum on the street walks up to you and starts a conversation with you to establish a repore, and then asks for money.

And I can’t forget to mention the MC. Where to begin… Imagine some combination of Emeril Lagasse and a cokehead on the tail end of a 3 day bender. Annoying and obnoxious are two words that only begin to describe this guy’s stage act. And you know by how over the top it was, it has to be an act (that or everyone this guy knows must want to kill him). He’d come out between bands and announce the next band, talk about some upcoming show, and then throw out a bunch of promo CD’s which no doubt contained a bunch of Christian music. As he threw out the CD’s, he screamed “Bam!” OK, I give up, there are not enough words to describe this guy. He was annoying and that is that.

As you can probably tell, this isn’t a standard show review. Being that Tooth and Nail snubbed me, I decided not to write a review. I of course had my camera along and did take some pictures, but most of them didn’t turn out very well. I’ll post a photo update soon.

Lately, it seems like I’m having less time to screw around or even for WoW like I used to. It used to seem like I’d have a good few hours to play WoW or do a little coding each night, but lately I’ve had so much coding to do between Decoy, applying for a job at Sierra Bravo, and other projects that I pretty much have come home for the last week, hopped on the computer, and coded most of the night.

The good thing is I’m learning a lot, especially from the Sierra Bravo application. Even if I don’t get an interview or even complete the project, it will have served as a great lesson in object oriented PHP. Ironicly, the first thing that got me excited about PHP was the fact that it wasn’t object oriented. There aren’t near the requirements for coding. I realize my future as a programmer probably depends on my grasp of OOP.

My only worry is losing interest in programming with so much going on. It’s easy to get burnt out on this stuff quickly. It worries me somewhat when I’ve already got a bunch on my plate and Aaron tells me he has at least 2 other projects for me to work on.

Minnesota is starting to warm up these days. That means it’s getting in the 50s. It was a perfect time to go check out an early Friday show.
The night got off to a great start with Protest The Hero opening things up. They have a great stage presence and you would swear you were listening to a recording. Bassist, Arif, is out of control. The man can pull off utterly massive bass lines and be flailing around stage at the same time. Unfortunately, most of the young crowd at the Triple Rock tonight was unfamiliar with this band. The bands latest, Kezia, was just released on Vagrant Records this past Tuesday. This may be why they received little fanfare that night. It just so happened they were selling copies of that very album for only $5. I picked myself up a copy. These guys stole the show as far as I was concerned. All indications point to Protest The Hero having a very good 2006.

Grade: A

As Cities Burn’s set can be summed up with one word: disappointing. Son, I Loved You At Your Darkest was a decent enough album. It turns out it doesn’t translate well to a live show. For the most part the band was just plain boring. At one point the lead singer was standing with his hand in his pocket for a good minute and a half of a song. Maybe this type of music just doesn’t work well live. The spacey parts of their songs served as snoozefests for a majority of the crowd, though, there were quite a number of As Cities Burn t-shirts floating around.

Grade: D

Things got rocking again with Since By Man. I am admittedly not a fan of their style, but they have a lot of energy live. The smaller portion of the crowd who knew the band were getting into it and there was much hardcore pitting and dancing.

Grade: C

After Since By Man, The Bled were up. Having seen the band once before at the same venue opening for Avenged Sevenfold (seems weird now), I knew I was in for a treat. Lead vocalist, James, is a mixture of brash and sincere. At this point in the show, I was joined by Decoy photographer Matt Birhanzel and his camera. The Bled’s set bounced between old favorites and offerings from Found in the Flood. They are at their best on previous album’s tracks though. About two-thirds of the way through the set, James paused to tell a story. Some kid had given him a pair of shop glasses and he told him he would wear them on stage and with that they ripped into “Spitshine Sonata.” The night closed in full force with “Red Wedding.” As Birhanzel had said, “A perfect closer.”

Grade: B+

Overall Grade: B-

You know the song that goes “I think I’m turning Japanese?” Well, I think I might be turning British.

I’ve had a nasty cold for the last week or so. It started out as a sore throat and then I started getting a runny nose. Inevitably, a few days later I was hacking up mucous. Sounds fun, huh?

Normally at work, I’ll grab a cup of coffee during my first break, but the other day I decided on some lemon tea instead since my throat was so thrashed. It did wonders. Ever since that day, I’ve been drinking tea at work and I love it!

The the other day Hank and I were talking about how we never get to see Team Sanchez since we don’t have MTV2 anymore. Think British Jackass, only way more crazy. It prompted me to go seek out some downloads. I found that the show, in Europe, is called Dirty Sanchez. I assume they changed the name for American television. Stupid American television. Searching for that gave much better results.

One of those results was a DVD entitled The Darker Side. I sat down and watched it the other night. Frickin hilarious! Jackass was one thing, but these guys are absolutely nuts. It made me cringe and I nearly puked several times, but I don’t know if I’ve ever laughed so hard.