Jared’s Blog

I attended my first show in about a year and a half on Monday. Opiate for the Masses, Alexisonfire, The Bled, and Avenged Sevenfold were rocking the Triple Rock Social Club in Minneapolis for only $12.50. I decided it was worth a trek down even if I went alone. It all started out when my friend Matt asked me if I was going to the show the night before. I didn’t even know A7X was gonna be in town. So quickly, I checked things out. It was pretty cheap and I was thristing for a good show to go to. Then Matt told me that one of our friends might be able to get us in for free. This was even better and pretty much made me decide to go no matter what. I waited around until about 3 on Monday afternoon before finding out that I wasn’t getting passes for free and that Matt wasn’t going to come with. By the time I finally got on the road it was about 4. A short hour and a half later, I was standing outside the Triple Rock freezing in the 35 degree weather in just a hoodie. They must have been late getting things running because we didn’t get let in til a little after 6. Things got going quickly.

The first band on was Opiate for the Masses. I’d never heard the band before. They were ok, but their lead singer was a little weird. He came out wearing a leather bomber hat and a leather jacket. I’m like ok. Shortly after their first song he ripped off the hat and jacket and his shirt. So you’ve got this little bleached hair dude jumping around humping things. I was standing up front and he came and rubbed his head on me one time. He did it to other people too though, so I didn’t feel so stupid. It was a little hard to hear their music because I was right in front of the guitarist, so I got mostly guitar. Overall, I’d give them a C. The music was ok, and their stage presence was pretty good, but nothing too impressive.

The second band on stage was Alexisonfire. I was actually excited to see them. I’ve heard their CD and I thought it was pretty good. Unfortunately, they failed to impress me in a live setting. I think under different circumstances, I would’ve liked them more. FIrst of all, I had the guitarist right in front of me who was playing at a blisteringly loud volume. I only heard a little vocals and bass. And as for the other guitarists, well forget it. The crowd wasn’t much into them either. There was one kid up front who seemed to know every other song (which I found odd), but other than that, no one else was really interested. They were actually pretty comical. Their lead signer was trying to get some kind of reaction out of the crowd. They even staged this “fight’ between the guitarist and the lead singer. It came off as a desparate attempt for attention though. I really don’t want to give this band a bad wrap though. They are a very good band, but things just didn’t work that night.

After Alexisonfire got done, I turned around to find my high school friend Sean standing 3 feet away from me. Him and I caught up with each other before The Bled came on. I found out my favorite band from home, Redbook Standard, had broken up. Also that one of our friends was in the looney bin for a few days. So much for good news, but Sean was doing well and going to school for music in Minneapolis. I’ll always remember Sean the first time I saw him. He was the “new kid” in 9th grade. He showed up from California with short bleached hair and straight edge crosses on his hands. He listened to a healthy dose of NOFX and Bad Religion, and I can thank him for turning me on to Less Than Jake and Goldfinger. Shortly after he arrived, I became friends with him. He eventually quit being straight edge and we did our fair share of partying around senior year and a little after we graduated. I’m getting a bit off track though. Sean told me he was there just to see The Bled. All I knew about them was that they were a straight up hardcore band with a growing fan base. They actually got invited to go out on Ozzfest this year, but their label can’t afford it, so they’re taking donations from fans on their website. I really wonder if they’re going to raise enough to go. Anyway, they came out blew things up. It was a totally different crowd. People were moshing and crowd surfing. There was a handful of people screaming the lyrics up front (Sean being one of those people). While I had moved from my post in front of the guitarist, I still found the mix to be quite bad up front. The PA speakers were right overhead, so a lot of the sound went over me. I still enjoyed most of their set. At one point the lead singer made the comment, “We’ve got half waters,” as he held up his mini water bottle the venue provided, “I’ve got half a microphone,” as he pointed to the decapitated mic he was holding, “so lets do this one with half shirts,” as he grabs his shirt and folds it up to his chest. It was hilarious.

After a long setup time, A7X was ready to go. Having never seen the band live (not even in video), I didn’t know what to expect. Right away, they filled the stage with smoke as this ominous piano started playing. The band jumped out on stage and kicked right into Eternal Rest. The crowd went nuts. There were people moshing, body’s surfing, pushing, screaming lyrics. It was GREAT! I was sitting there and thinking, why did I wait a year and a half to do this. I had forgotten how much I really love live shows. I love everything about them. The people crammed together, the engergy. I love it all. I will most likely be the 40 year old guy at the rock shows when I’m older. During the first song, Shadow’s mic dropped out, so he was using the guitarists mic for awhile. They did get him back his mic, but the levels were a little off after that. Waking the Fallen/Unholy Confessions were next followed by my favorite song, Chapter Four. M Shadows, the lead singer, was working the crowd really well. He’d run to one side of the stage and let people sing into the mic a lot. In the middle of their set, they really surprised me by playing their most artsy song, I Won’t See You Tonight (parts I and II). In total, the songs is about 11 or 12 minutes long laced with a ton of sweet guitar work. The best was when both guitarists would come to the front of the stage and rip together. One was left handed, so it looked cool as hell. I was surprised they chose to play the song though because its so long and its not heavy at all (at least not part I). I don’t remember much of the rest of the setlist. I think they played 3 more songs, all of which were really good. I do remember they ended things with Second Heartbeat (my 2nd favorite song by the band). After that, they crowd was still buzzing and started chanting encore. Some guy from the club came out and said there is a curfew in town, and that there would be no more music. Everyone booed. About 2 minutes later, the band came back out and played Desecrate Through Reverence. I was already standing near the door, so I just took it all in. It’s strange how different the atmosphere is when you aren’t right up front. The audio mix was much better too. They played the song flawlessly. I realized then, that these guys have a ton of musicianship. They are all very talented at their instruments which is something I didn’t notice while banging my head up front. Their show was everything I thought it would be and more.

One thing is for sure, I was very happy with my choice to go. I really miss that energy you can only find at a good live show. Hopefully it won’t be another year and a half before I go to another show. There’s a Killswitch Engage/In Flames/As I Lay Dying tour coming up that I really want to see. From Autumn to Ashes and Atreyu will also be out on tour this spring. We’ll see if I can afford/make it to any of those shows. I’ll leave things off with some pictures I found on the A7X forums today. They are not mine, so don’t give me credit.

So on Sunday I got a new toy. My friend Bev had this laptop she was trying to get rid of. She said it would randomly shutdown and sometimes the screen would just go black. I picked it up from her on Sunday and after 30 seconds, I had pretty much determined the problem. It was running Windows 98. At start up I think about 12 programs started up. So I immediately threw Windows XP on it to test my theory. Sure enough, it seemed just fine. I did find out the next day that the battery was pretty worthless though. If I intend to go mobile with this thing, it definately will need a new battery. Oh well, I figure under $100 for a laptop isn’t bad. It’s a Celeron (Coppermine) 700MHz with 128MB of RAM and a 20GB hard drive. I took XP off of it yesterday and put Gentoo Linux on it. What’s funny is that Linux may have cured the battery problem. We’ll see though. I’m still working on getting things all set up and I’m sure I’ll run into a few bumps along the way, but I’m pretty happy with my new toy.

Last weekend John and I headed down to Hank and Burns’ apt. for the night. Now, other than a little beer consumption and basketball watching on Friday, nothing interesting went on. Saturday was a different story. Mark it on the calendar, John, Hank, and I were frisbee golfing. Yes, it was cold, yes the course was covered in ice, and yes we are nuts! Saturday it was nice an sunny, unfortunately the temperature was about 26 degrees and the winds were holding at about 25 MPH with gusts up to 40MPH. So there we were, freezing our asses off playing the first round of the year. We slipped, we slid, we even managed to throw some disks into the creek. Don’t worry, we got them back. I really don’t know what we were thinking, but eh, it was fun.

I’m sitting here and I can’t believe I just watched Alabama upset Stanford. The Maryland/Syracuse game didn’t go my way either. As long as Cincinnati pulls out a couple more wins, I’m ok in my brackets.

The main reason for my post tonight is to say that I’ve thrown up a copy of my resume and that I tossed up a review that has been at Decoy for awhile now. Haste the Day are impressive, give my review a read and then give them a listen.

First of all, I made a new page for these pictures to make it a little easier on those dialup people. There’s over 160 of them, so enjoy.

East Coast Trip Pictures

I’m also trying to think of all the things I need to write about. My trip synopsis took forever to write, so I’ve missed quite a bit. First thing I can think of is I won Wild tickets! Looks like I’ll finally get to see my team on their last game of the season (that is if they don’t make the playoffs). They’re nosebleed seats, but I don’t care. I’ve decided to take Mandi with me. Hopefully she can get work off. I’m also hoping that we get to play spoilers. The game is against the St. Louis Blues, and they are fighting for a playoff spot right now. What’s crazy is since the trade deadline, the Wild have gone something like 7 straight without a loss. I don’t know how the math works out, but I’d be interested to see where they end up if they win out the rest of the season. I guess they’d have something like 80 points, which might be just enough to get them in. Chances are, they won’t make it though.

Anyone who watches TV knows that it’s March Madness right now. I spent a good portion of the day watching games. So far I’m at the bottom of my pool, but it’s still early. I did very little research on the teams, so I’ll be surprised if I do very well. I’ve got Kentucky winning it all against Connecticut. This year isn’t quite as good as last year. I remember watching games with my friends last year. It was just a lot more fun staring at the brackets and watching my teams.

In my fantasy hockey league, it’s playoff time. Right now, I’m two wins away from winning it all. I am really surprised I did this well considering it was my first year doing fantasy hockey and only my third as a hockey fan. I don’t know how well this week will treat me because I’m up against the #1 guy in our league. Regardless, I’m guarenteed 3rd.

Being that it’s my senior year of college, I’m also on the job hunt. I’ve got a couple good leads right now. One is up in Virginia. It’s kind of a long story so bear with me. It all started a month or so ago when TJ got fired. She was the technical director of my high school. I guess there was some stuff about her coming in hung over and not doing her job very well. Anyway, she’s gone. In her abscence, Bill, a guy who works for a service coop, has taken over. According to my mom, he’s so much more on top of things. They even had him do a full inventory of the schools computer resources. The school board reviewed the inventory (which included some computers almost 10 years old) and decided to put some money into new technology. They are taking bids right now and so far the only bid placed was from the service coop that Bill works for. It so happens my mom was talking to one of the execs at the service coop, and he said they could use me for the summer if they get their bid. I’d be working with Bill to make the network fully switched (they still have 10base hubs), put in a GBit backbone, setup a bunch of new eMacs, and basically get them up to date. I could see having a lot of fun doing all that. I know they’d pay me well too. Being that I’d have a degree, I’m almost sure they’d pay me $12/hr or so. My chances of getting hired are also good. According to my mom, there would be 4 people involved in the decision to hire me. Bill, the exec my mom talked to (Paul), my former Kindergarten teacher and the current Superindendant Patty, and one other guy at the service coop. Being that I’ve got ins with 3 of those people, I’d say I have a really good shot at getting the job.

Also on the job front, is Fishbowl Solutions. My contact with them began back in October. I applied via an online via my school, but never really got in contact with the owner. We played email and phone tag a little bit, but I haven’t tried any communication with him for a couple months. Today though, I got an email from a friend who works there. I guess Tim, the guy in charge, is interested in me and plans to call me for an interview sometime. I’d get to work with a bunch of SJU alumni and live in the Cities! I’d say my chances of getting this job are also fairly good. So things are looking up for me in the job market. Everyone who has ever told me “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” couldn’t have been more right.

Well, that’s it for tonight. Enjoy the pictures and hope for me on the job stuff. Oh and congratulate me on my first full day running in Linux (I used no Windows for a whole 24 hours and it felt good).

Well, here I am about a week after my trip out east. Gotta love that we come back and it’s pretty much midterm time. I’ve got a paper and a presentation due Friday and I just found out I have a test Thursday. It’s gonna be a rough 3 days for sure. I really wanted to get an update out tonight though, so here it goes.

I’ll start with a rundown of my trip. Amanda, John, and I took off at about 1PM on Friday. The plan was to drive straight to Washington, DC. 3 people, 20 hours, 1200 miles, one shot! I was pumped up as hell. Things got off to a good start, we made it across WI fairly quickly and without getting pulled over by the assholes they call a police force. A little kink in our plans soon followed though. Instead of driving around Chicago, we missed an exit and headed right through downtown. It was cool to see the Sears Tower along with the rest of the downtown area all lit up at night. Amanda was driving so John and I were free to gawk at the sights. We made it through with relative ease and, surprisingly, without seeing much for traffic. On the other side of the city, we soon ran into our first toll road. Being that it was the first time any one of us had seen or used a toll, we all jumped up in excitement and started snapping pictures. Little did we know that we would grow to hate tolls later down the road. That about wrapped up IL.

On to IN which also meant it was my turn to drive. By now it was about 9:30PM. I marched right across IN and into OH. By this time we were all getting kind of tired. We still pushed on though. After a short pit stop, John took over the wheel sometime after 1AM and I settled into the back seat for a nap. Of course John and Amanda were now wide awake and John decided to play a little game with me. I had to “rate” his CD.

Before I go on, there’s something you need to know about John. He has the oddest taste in music. This kid listens to everything from J-pop (Japanese Pop), to classical, to pop and rock. Oh and he doesn’t care what he burns on to a CD. So you’ll be listening to this Led Zepplin song, and it’s followed up with Britney Spears, and then a classical song comes on.

Well the thing kicks off with Andrew WK. I fucking hate that band. So much for a good rating. Next were a few radio rock type songs I actually like. Then came the hammer. Michael Jackson! Yep, the King of Pop just dropped the CD into negative rating territory real quick. I believe my words were something like “After this, no song could have any redeeming quality whatsoever!” With that I dozed off as we rode into PA. John put in an extra long shift and drove until sunrise. It was amazing to see the sun come up over the rolling mountains of PA. I really like that area of the country. It’s too bad none of our pictures turned out from the car.

Finally about 7, we stopped outside MD to get some food. One thing I have to say is TRUCK STOPS RULE! They have everything, it’s really cheap, and they’re always open. Truck stops became one of our best friends on the road. Well finally about 8, we rolled into Washington DC. Amanda was driving and I was trying to navigate us to our hotel. This is about the time I learned DC streets are just plain messed. There’s the normal grid, but then you’ve got all these angled streets that cross back and forth. Then you throw in a mess of interstates and highways.
So yeah, we got lost… a few times.
About an hour later, we found our way to our hotel. Let’s just say it wasn’t our picture of inviting. It was not “within walking distance of all the attractions” as the description had said and it more or less looked like shit. Just think of one of those murder movies where the killer stays in some cheap motel and stashes the body in the closet. Needless to say, we cancelled our reservations and booked a nicer place.

After getting lost yet again, we rolled up to a ritzy looking joint called Washington Plaza. It had marble floors with a lot of gold trim. Fancy! We were pretty amazed with it after seeing where we had first picked out. It had an outdoor swimming pool and a really nice looking bar (although the pool was closed). Unfortunately, our room didn’t live up to the expectations the lobby had given us. Nonetheless, we took advantage of the showers and beds. Everyone showered and took quick naps before we set out on the town.

Reenergized, we took off. After some quick photo opps at some cool looking things, we headed for the White House. There was a big black fence you could walk up to, but it was quite a ways off from the actual building. There were also security guards every few hundred feet. It was cool to check things out up close, but I’m not the biggest fan of politics or history. At least I can say I’d been there and seen it. We kept on our feet and saw a few other cool buildings that I can’t remember right now. Then we headed for the Washington Monument which you can see from just about anywhere in town. I quite often used it as a directonal tool when navigating. Props to whoever designed it! My memory is a little fuzzy at this point. I know we spent the rest of the afternoon hitting all the notable monuments and sights like the Jefferson Memorial, the FDR memorial, the Vietnam wall, the Korean wall, the Lincoln monument, and a few other places.

At about 6 we headed back to our room. It was getting dark and we were hungry. I wish we would’ve seen more, but we were so tired and hungry. I probably would’ve forgotten most of it anyway. After another quick nap in the hotel, we set out for a cool restaurant we found in one of our many brochures. They were supposed to be a bar and grill type place with a cool atmosphere. After walking several blocks, we never found it and ended up hitting Fudruckers instead. By this time it was about 8:30PM and we were ready for bed. The walk back was painful. I think we had walked about 10 miles just that afternoon and we were all on only a few hours of sleep. We found ourselves in bed by 9:30PM with plans of taking off for Atlantic City in the morning.

We woke well rested and sore from the day before. After a quick buzz by the capitol building, we headed towards Arlington National Cemetary. John, not being the best navigator drove us about 15 miles out of the way and in the wrong direction. So I gave up driving duties to Amanda and navigated us to Arlington. I wasn’t really excited about seeing the place, but I thought checking out JFK’s grave, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and a few other things might be interesting. The coolest part, I think was that you got a nice view of most of DC from the hill. After Arlington, we tried to find the Iwo Jima memorial statue. We succeeded, but couldn’t find the exit to park near it. We settled for a drive by and snapped a few pictures.

With that we headed out of DC and toward Atlantic City. I took over the wheel and drove us across part of MD and into DE. We got to drive across Chessapeake Bay on a huge bridge which was really cool. John was amazed with the ocean.

Delaware wasn’t all that impressive. It reminded me a lot of rural Minnesota actually. Small farming type towns, 2 lane roads, relatively flat, lots of trees. At about 4PM, we showed up to a toll ferry. Being that it was Sunday, they only ran the ferry twice that day. We would have to wait until 7:30PM for the next ferry. The catch was, if we went in then, we couldn’t leave the grounds. Reluctantly we opted in. They did have a cafeteria, a gift shop, and a few games to play. There was mini golf, but it wasn’t open. Right away Amanda and John found the beer and had to have one. I decided not to. John and I played some video games for awhile which Amanda watched. Then we got some cards and played card games for a few hours. Finally the time arrived to board our ferry. They had us drive onto this huge boat and then you just park. It’s all done so the boat is equally weighted. The boat was fairly big. It had an indoor part on the first deck above the cars, and then there were 2 smaller observation decks above that. It was a little cold, so we mostly stayed inside. John had never been on a big boat like this so he was just giddy. After landing, we drove off into the night for Atlantic City. It was about 45 minutes later that we rolled into what I like to call “mini-Vegas”

Well, I’ve now been typing this for over an hour and it’s getting quite long. I’m going to call this intermission time. I’ll finish off my story tomorrow and post the 160-some pictures I have. Stay tuned Mehle fans!

Well, there we were in Atlantic City. So much different from DC. I think we were all really excited to see our “3 star hotel,” The Tropicana. So we roll into the covered parking area. Right away a vallet guy comes out and opens the doors for us. Amanda ran in while John and I unloaded the car. We get to the room and its way better than our Washington hotel. Right away we headed down to check out the casino and eat. Our dinner (at 11PM) was awesome. Everything was pretty expensive, but you got what you paid for. I had a huge BBQ pork sandwich. With that, we headed out into the casino. Amanda and I found some nickel slots of play around on. I threw in a $10 and actually doubled my money within 15 minutes. Amanda made a few bucks too. We moved on to quarter poker while John hit the blackjack tables. About an hour later, we all met back in the room and headed to bed.

We woke up and looked into staying another night. Turns out, it was only gonna cost $50, and John said he’d pay. So with that we booked a new room, then headed out on the boardwalk. By this time our legs were getting quite used to walking everywhere. We made a trip all the way down one way, stopped by the visitors center, and saw a few shops. On the way back we decided to get lunch at Hard Rock on the beach. Soon enough, we were enjoying some nice tall drinks in some collectors glasses. The drinks must’ve been a little big because we were all a little drunk after them. Back at the hotel, we downed a bottle of wine Amanda brought with. The booze must have made us all sleepy because we took a snooze for a good 3 hours. I had planned on going to lose some more money at the casino, but instead opted to just hang out in the hotel room. It was nice to relax and not have to drive anywhere just for a day.

We were up nice and early to start on our way home. We decided to check out the Liberty Bell on our way through Philedelphia. After finding a parking spot, we headed toward the Bell. Lucky for us, a cop directed us to where the security check was or we’d have been doing a lot more walking. The security checkpoint wasn’t bad, kinda like an airport. The people were really nice and they allowed cameras in and everything. We made our way down a long hallway with all kinds of information about the Bell. At the end, there it was. I was surprised it wasn’t bigger. We got our pictures in front of it and then left. On our way out, the security guard mentioned we should check out Independance Hall. So we got our passes and waited about an hour to get in. It was well worth the wait. They brought us into a little building where a ranger gave us a little history about the town. It was more like a quiz, but the guy made it so fun. You could tell he loved his job. After that, he brought us into Independance Hall. It’s just like you see in the old pictures. Most of the original brick is still there. It was my favorite part of the trip.

Afterwards, the three of us headed to find some food. I, for one, was not going to miss out on getting my philly cheese steak in Philly. Unfortunately, I decided to get mine at this indoor cafeteria type place instead of from a street vendor. It was good and greasy, but kind of bland. I am pretty sure one of the street vendors would’ve had a better steak.

A long drive later, we stopped outside Toldeo, OH for the night. Not much to say about the place. Our hotel was probably the most accomadating though. Free wireless internet in the rooms, free extended continental breakfast, and it wasn’t too expensive for 3 people. The next day we made our way back to good ole MN. After a quick stop at Andy and Hank’s to drop Amanda off, John and I drove back to SJU.

And that’s it! That’s the end of my trip. 12 states (counting DC), 2500 miles, and tons of fun. Pictures next time, I promise.