For some reason, Dyers seem to have limited options for successful career choices. I’m not sure why, but as far as I knew, the only successful paths for Dyers were book writing (like Dr. Wayne Dyer), Leather store owning (as in Dyer Leather), witchcrafting (ala Mary Dyer), and beard growing (hello). While computers and heavy metal have always factored in, I always thought of those as lifestyle choices with benefits rather than career choices. Thanks to Myles Dyer, the vocalist behind the video below, I can now add “heavy metal farmering” to the official Dyer career list.

Tractooooooor. Moooooo.

Enjoy!

Yesterday, in How To Choose The Best Free Virus Protection, I talked about a method to evaluate free virus scan products by comparing the commercial versions to the free versions. I know that only the geekiest of you got through the whole thing, and the rest fell asleep at the halfway point because I failed to mention anything about chicken monkey donkey porn. For those who simply want a recommendation for a good, free virus scanner, I applied yesterday’s method to 5 of the free virus scanners to find out if they really are recommendable.

5. ClamWin

Despite a badly stripped down UI, Clamwin has a cool factor because it’s one of the few (if not the only) open source virus scanners out there. Unfortunately, the detection rates are lower than other available free products, and the product lacks an on-access component. Without an on-access scanner, this program is only able to clean your PC after it has become infected, and really offers no protection against virus threats.

Rating: Not recommended

I used to run a virus protection system for a large multinational corporation, so every once and a while someone will ask me for advice on what the best free antivirus program is. Corporations have no problem spending the money for reliable virus protection because they need immediate support and someone to blame when something goes wrong. For the home user, the question tends to be more along the lines of “What virus protection program can you recommend, and can I get it for free?”

For the personal user, virus protection has gone from a software purchase to a protection racket, with consumers paying between $40 and $80 per year to have adequate virus protection on their PC’s. Once those consumers stop subscribing, they no longer get updates and their virus protection becomes ineffective in a matter of days. Don’t get me wrong. $40 a year is a small amount to ask for all the research and testing goes into keeping PC’s protected against the latest threats, but for a lot of people, a recurring $40 payment is a lot of dough.

Wouldn’t it be nice to get something that works as well as a commercial product, and get it for free? Well, you can. There are several products on the market that offer virus protection for no cost, but they range in the amount of protection they offer. If you’re not a security expert, how do you pick the product that gives you the best protection? You don’t need to be a computer wizard to find the answer, but you do need to know who to look to for accurate information.

The Life of Riley is a weekly post that details my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 483): Homemade Food And Creepy Machines

We started the day by watching Romance and Cigarettes, which ended up being good but weird. I imagine that it would appeal to Coen Brothers fans. We sat down to play Carcassonne for the first time, and the game didn’t turn out to be nearly as complicated as I expected. We went to #1GF!’s family’s house for dinner, and we were charged with bringing desert. We brought ice cream from a local farm, who sold quarts at the same price as half gallons. Why the two sizes were the same price was beyond me, but it was painted on the wooden sign, so it wasn’t a special or anything. Hold on. Maybe having the half gallons priced the same as the quarts makes people think that they’re getting a bargain and distracts them from the relatively high price they’re paying for the half gallon. Ooh those sneaky farmers.

We had a nice dinner, and to the kids’ delight, #1GF! got startled by a mechanical spider that had been set up to crawl down a string when you made a loud noise. I got a jar of homemade pickle chips to use on my lunches, so I couldn’t have been happier. They’re so much better than the store bought ones. After we got home, we spent the rest of the night playing Carcassonne.

Monday (Day 484): Unemployment Benefits

I typically get up at 5:30 these days (which seems a little crazy for someone who doesn’t have anywhere to go in the morning), but today I woke up at 4 AM and then 5 AM. Not having a job doesn’t detract from the feeling that my brain is robbing me of free sleep time when I wake up before the alarm. I laid in bed staring at the blurry red haze that is the alarm clock trying to figure out if I was looking at a 6 or an 8 and trying not to let the day start in my head before it did in the physical world.

Even though I’ve never been a huge Foreigner fan, I can tell you the first time I heard “Jukebox Hero”. I was around 10, and my friend had stolen it out of his brother’s records and brought it down to the tweed clad, schoolhouse record player in the linoleum and paneled basement that everyone seemed to have in those days. I sort of shrugged when the kid told me that I had to hear it, and then moved the needle back several times to hear the song over again. I can remember that the song was on the album Foreigner 4 because for a while there, I tacked the four onto the band’s name, calling them “Foreigner 4″.

Kids are fun and all, but I’m not normally in the habit of posting videos of them here on the blog because it’s a slippery slide into pictures of kitties and talking about my period. This kid, however, gets a pass. Even though he isn’t tall enough to put a foot on the monitor and strike a rock idol pose, he gets so into “Jukebox Hero” that he ends up eating his microphone.

Netflix delivered up a double whammy on the official Netflix blog that should appeal to geeks and non-geeks alike. Not only did they announce a partnership that provided 2,500 additional movies to the Watch Instantly service, but they have finally released an official Netflix API.

Partnership With Starz Play Shows Some Promise

The new partnership with Starz Play that has allowed Netflix to add 1,000 movies today with another 1,500 promised by year’s end. Sure, that thousand is padded with movies like Desperately Seeking Susan and Air Bud, but it does includes some fairly recent gems like No Country For Old Men, Superbad, The Lookout, Gone Baby Gone, and even the latest Season 3 episodes of Heroes for your instant viewing pleasure.

If you’ve been watching the news lately, the economy might look pretty shaky right now. The stock market is dropping, businesses are looking for government handouts, and the President is preaching doom and gloom for us all. It’s as if a buyer’s market has become a bad thing because golden parachutes for those at the top suddenly aren’t large enough to blot out the sun from the average man on the street.

No one can predict the future, but if I’ve learned one thing in my life, it’s that the future is rarely as ominous as people make it out to be. Here are 5 types of people that I’d really offer a free, hot cup of STFU to when it comes to listening to their views on what the economy is and isn’t.

1. People Who Freak Out Every Time The Stock Market Drops

If you’re a current retiree who has to sell shares from your retirement fund to make ends meet, you are allowed to freak out a little because the value of your retirement fund can have a direct effect on your lifestyle. Most people who I hear moaning and groaning the loudest about their funds dropping in value aren’t retirees, though. They’re generally people who are still buying into their retirement funds.

Why is it that people look at low prices as being a good thing everywhere that they shop except the stock market? How does that make sense? If you’re buying into your retirement fund, low prices are actually a good thing. Rule number one of how to make money in finance isn’t “buy high, sell higher”. It’s “buy low, sell high”. When stock prices are down, you should be giddily buying, not bitching that you can’t buy at a higher price. A low price means you can buy more shares and have a potentially higher profit margin when you sell those shares after you retire.

So, if you’re not currently retired, do us all a favor and stop sighing and complaining about how much you’ve “lost” in the stock market. The fact is, you haven’t lost anything until you sell at a lower price than you bought at. If you aren’t selling, then you aren’t losing. Got it? Now, get out there and start buying because there is a fire sale going on right now, and supplying a steady stream of coke and hookers to that retirement home in your golden years is not going to be cheap.

Every web guru will tell you that having a list of your best posts readily available for new visitors is important to attracting new readers. Unfortunately, creating and updating that list can be very time consuming. Best Foot Forward is a WordPress plugin that I wrote to take some of the grunt work out of creating those lists and get you back to writing.

With the Best Foot Forward widget, you simply tag your top posts with a specific keyword (like “favorite-september-08″ or whatever you prefer) and then tell the plugin to show all posts tagged with your keyword. When you want to add a post to the list, you simply add your keyword to the post’s tags. This means you can create “best of” lists on the fly without wasting time creating and formatting lists of links.

WordPress 2.6.X now saves multiple revisions of posts, and Best Foot Forward was updated to version 1.2 to stop those revisions from showing up in your sidebar.

For more information, head over to my Best Foot Forward WordPress Widget Page.

The Life of Riley is a weekly post that details my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 476): Sticky Birds and Milkweed

The day started with the tile guy calling and telling us that we had bought wall grout instead of floor grout for him to finish our bathroom floor. We didn’t know that there was a difference, so we had bought the same stuff the last contractor used. I guess the last contractor didn’t know the difference either. The tile guy let us know that we needed sanded grout because non-sanded grout cracks if you use it on the floor. This is mistake number 4,286 added to the last contractor’s fault list. The tile guy said that he wouldn’t be able to finish the job today, but if we got the grout, he’d be back on Monday morning to get it done.

We made a trip to the local home improvement store to get the right grout, and I was admittedly a little irritated that I was still finding major things that the last contractor did wrong. We were able to find a 25 lb bag of grout relatively quickly, and I wanted to get out of there and enjoy the rest of my Sunday with #1GF!. That idea sort of evaporated when #1GF! suggested that we look at lights and knobs.

I run around doing house stuff all week long, but the weekends are #1GF!’s only time to get involved in the process. That means she’s excited to look at house stuff when I’m sick of it. I understood her excitement, so I tried to play along, but ended up sort of standing back while she looked at things. I tried not to be irritated about doing house stuff, but I eventually just told her that I needed a break to hang out with her without thinking about house stuff. She understood, and got me out of there.

Shotgun CD reviews are short reviews on CDs that you can usually pick up for $10 or less. For further explanation, check the FAQ. To have your band’s CD reviewed, drop me a line on my contact page.

Tragedy - We Rock Sweet Balls, And Can Do No Wrong (rock): After writing about Tragedy back in March, the band was nice enough to send over a copy of their album for me to review. It has taken me months to try to figure out what to say about it because even though the album is swimming in cowbell and has a fair number of old school metal windup screams (eeeaaAAaaAAaaAAH!), there is no way to escape the fact that I’m listening to hard rock covers of Bee Gees songs. Yes, you heard me. Hard Rock covers of Bee Gees songs.

I’m not going to pretend that I can sit down and listen to this every day or that it doesn’t come with a massive cringe factor, but like the Golden Throats series, it’s difficult to deny the album is fun. In some respects, it’s the two girls one cup of hard rock: Despite having a hard time turning away from it, you get a sick pleasure from tricking other people into checking it out. Nearly every metal and hard rock fan has the same reaction at that gruesome moment when they realize what they’re listening to, and their faces contort into a confused mixture of amusement and repulsion.

Of course, novelty is the point and the band knows it. If having an album cover that has lightning, fire, an Iron Maiden font, a Led Zeppelin font, and the words “We Rock Sweet Balls And Can Do No Wrong” aren’t enough to tell you that the album is tongue in cheek, then Tragedy’s version of “You should be Dancing” should be more than enough. The track has a breakdown in the style of Spinal Tap’s “Stonehenge” (No one knows who they were… Or what they were doing…) where an evil sounding voice talks about evil pagan babies with hooves for two full minutes. I’m actually ashamed, but I laugh and shake my head at it almost every time I hear it.

It’s pretty clear that the band isn’t taking themselves too seriously, and I can’t help from laughing a lot while I’m listening. This may not be something that you’ll listen to every day, but it’s one of those oddities that is awesome to have in your CD collection to spring on people when they least expect it. B+

I think the one of the most fun things about the beard pages is seeing how other people out on the web react to them. While combing through my referrer stats, I found these three clippings that turned up from my recent run on Digg.

3. From Cheap And Dirty

This made me want to make up a t-shirt.

If you’re going to retire your old PC, it’s only natural that you’d want to delete all of your personal data from it. Most people will search out what personal files they can, and delete them with a simple push of the delete key. Unfortunately, when you delete a file in Windows, the operating system only removes the reference from the master file table, leaving the actual data on the drive.

If your PC were a book and your files were chapter 9, Windows delete is like removing chapter 9 from the index, but leaving the pages in tact. The data may not look like it’s there to the average user, but until you write over that space, anyone with a free file recovery tool and access to your PC has a chance of recovering your files. That’s why if you’re going to retire a PC, the best thing that you can do is to completely scrub your hard drives by overwriting every last block with multiple passes of random data. Governments, corporations, and paranoid geeks have done this for years, and in this age of identity theft, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t either.

Don’t start sweating now. You don’t have to have a room full of mainframes or know anything about Star Trek to scrub your drives clean. With a free piece of open source software and the short set of instructions below, you can ensure that your private data will be banished to the land of wind and ghosts, which is way beyond the reach of anyone without a clean forensics lab and some incredibly skilled data recovery personnel.

#1GF!: Hey there’s Skateboard Man. We haven’t seen him around in a while.
Beard Man: He’s pretty old to be tooling around on a skateboard all the time, but he does some pretty good tricks. I wonder if he’s a pro or something.
#1GF!: Maybe he’s just really likes skateboarding.
Beard Man: Hey, ever wonder if we have names?
#1GF!: Like people say, “Hey here comes hat man or whatever?”
Beard Man: Yea, like that.
#1GF!: [smiling] Oooh, I don’t know. If we do, you’re probably the beard man.
Beard Man: Mmmm, Beard man. That would be so cool. [strutting] “Yo! Beard Man!” [waves to nonexistent fan] “Beard Man, Over here!” [winks and points with double gun fingers at another nonexistent fan]
#1GF!: I really worry about you sometimes.
Beard Man: Oh, don’t you worry about the Beard Man. He’s got big dreams and a solid reputation.

If people who don’t know you regularly saw you walking down the street, what nickname would they use to describe you?

The Life of Riley is a weekly post that details my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 469): Zartan Rice

#1GF! and I spent the morning watching The Brothers Solomon, which was so bad that it made me leave the house in spite of the rain. We had no destination, but we ended up going to a framing place to see if it was cheaper to have a bathroom mirror made than to buy one fully assembled from a home store. Pre-made is cheaper, but frame store people are almost as odd as people who work in video game stores.

On the way out, I set off all the motion detected Halloween stuff that has made it’s way onto shelves already. I was unimpressed. If, when I was a little kid, you came from the future to tell me that there would be motion sensitive Halloween decorations, I would think Disney on a small scale. If you showed me some of the motion-sensitive crap that they sell now that pales in comparison to what Disney was doing 30 years ago, I would probably want to take one of my short little legs and use it to kick you in the ding ding for pulling me away from my cartoons.

From there, we went looking for furniture at four different stores before going by the house to check on things. While I was showing #1GF! some of the changes (like our new heating system), the contractor called. He asked about my website for the first time, so I gave him the URL.

I don’t care who sees this site because I work hard on it, but when people I deal with professionally see it for the first time, I still get a little uneasy. I think it’s a leftover corporate mindset that makes me feel like people won’t take me seriously after they see it. It’s fine if some people think I’m an idiot because of this site, but I like to minimize that possibility with people that I deal with professionally. It’s not like I’m trying to be something I’m not, but there are masks we all wear in different situations that get removed with a site like this. Eh, what can you do? I still choose this site.

I made #1GF! enchiladas for dinner, and was disappointed to discover that the Zartarain’s Mexican rice package that I bought wasn’t Zartan Mexican rice. I really was. I thought Zartan rice would’ve been cool even though Zartan was the worst G.I. Joe character since Cover Girl. I took solace in the fact that #1GF! wouldn’t know who Zartan was, anyway.

I’ve been avoiding pants and sweatshirts for a couple of weeks now, pretending that the cold isn’t eating away the last few bits of summer, but when the front loaders come in and steal your lifeguard chairs, you know the summer season is coming to an end. You’ve only got one day left before the summer will officially be over, so make the most of it.

And no, this is not a license to “bust out the banana hammock one last time”. Yes, I am talking to you.

I’ve written about Stumbleupon in the past because it has driven so much traffic back to this site, but I mainly use my Stumbleupon page as an overflow for all of the funny stuff that I can’t seem to work into my blog. It’s so easy to use that it has become one of my most frequently used social networks. Back in August, StumbleUpon announced that they’d be making changes to the way their friend system works, and it looks like the new system is finally in place. Curious about some of the changes? Well, let’s check them out.

No More 200 Friend Limit

Most people will be really happy about this because they can have more friends, but I have mixed feelings. I regularly bumped off the limit, and would have to make room for new stumblers by weeding out inactive stumblers or those who no longer focused on content that I was interested in. The constant revision was a pain, but it made sure that I got the most relevant content for me. Removing the limit certainly creates less work, but it also removes the reminder to let go of stumblers who have moved on to other topics.

Shotgun CD reviews are short reviews on CDs that you can usually pick up for $10 or less. For further explanation, check the FAQ

Muddy Waters - The Definitive Collection (blues): When I was around fourteen years old, I lost my taste for the blues once I figured out how simple they were to play. Not much has changed since then, because as far as I’m concerned, Robert Johnson and his old timey blues cronies can suck it. If he made a deal with the devil to play like he did, he should kick Satan right in the devil dog because he lost a perfectly good soul for nothing.

Muddy Waters, on the other hand is one of the few blues artists that I not only tolerate, but I actually enjoy. The 24 tracks in this collection are listed in chronological order so that you can hear the progression of Waters’ style from 1948 to 1964. Although considered by many to be the father of Chicago Blues, Muddy Waters stopped playing guitar in 1955, so only about 9 tracks on the album feature him on guitar. Even on hits like “Mannish Boy” (”I’m a main. I spelled M… A child… N…”) and “Got My Mojo Working”, Jimmy Rodgers handled the guitar work and Muddy Waters was on vocals only.

I don’t know exactly what sets Muddy Waters apart from other artists. Maybe it’s the combination of electric guitars and vocals that verge on shouting that chase off that typical “poor me” blues feel that tends to turn me away. I’m no connoisseur of the blues, but this is one of the few blues albums that I enjoy. B+

While I stand by my original ending for last week’s CERN cartoon, I did have a few alternate endings that didn’t make the cut. Six of them are pictured below.

Now, a lot of these were a little too obvious, but I have to say that General Zod and the Yamato were closing in on the Sleestaks for the final cut.

I know there are better jokes out there though, so I thought I’d provide a template in case any of you can provide a geekier alternative. What do you think? Are you up for a little geekery?

Damnit, I can’t believe I forgot The Herculoids and Dr. Who. Gah. So many options…

Good luck.

I’m not into advice columns and stoner humor doesn’t work with as much as it used to, so it’s interesting that I’d find a stoner video advice column so interesting. I don’t know if it’s because it’s a new twist on the stoner formula or because the questions are so off the wall, but even my short attention span made it through all ten minutes.

The Highest of Pot Psychology (NSFW)

(via The Essence of Chris)

#1GF! and I are sitting in Chachky’s or Flingers, and there are piles of seemingly random crap tacked up to the walls. Among the junk on the wall opposite me, there is a picture of the cast of Star Trek and a rubber Yoda mask…

Me: Hey, there’s a picture of Star Trek on that wall.
#1GF!: [turns] Yes, I agree.
Me: And there’s a Yoda head there, too.
#1GF!: [turns and turns back]
Me: You don’t know who Yoda is.
#1GF!: Uh… E.T.?
Me: [thumps head on table]

The Life of Riley is a weekly post that details my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 462): Caysodaylos

Made breakfast and somehow got stuck watching Richie Rich. Movies like this are the reason that I draw a line in the sand against #1GF! about having every cable station known to man. There’s never anything worth watching on, but if you give me enough channels, I’ll invariably get sucked into watching a piece of crap like Richie Rich. I’d rather have three channels with nothing on because it’s cheaper and less addictive. Giving me access to 200 channels is like leaving pixie stix all over the house when you know the fat kid is coming over. It’s not a good idea for anyone involved.

When #1GF! was getting ready, I added three more tracks to my Finetune cowbell playlist and then checked my stats. I found a site that was attempting to imitate my beard quest because they “scoffed” at it. I have to say that I’m amused when people take non-serious things very seriously, but it made me think: If knockoffs start appearing for your version of a Ronco product, it’s time to dig out your life preserver because you’re probably scheduled to jump the shark very soon.

I played video games again, but found it extremely unsatisfying, so I didn’t play long. Instead, #1GF! and I decided to walk down to the beach and enjoy some of that ocean air. We ended up sitting on a wall watching the surfers who were congregating to catch some of the waves from a hurricane that had moved out to sea. I thought that it was sort of funny that even though both the air and the water were pretty warm, most of them had wetsuits on. I thought it was even funnier that most of them had hundreds of dollars worth of equipment, but absolutely no sense for waves.

After a while, we went to our local haunt to grab an early dinner, and heard someone behind me say that they “should’ve ordered the caysodaylos or whatever.” I had no idea that quesadillas were so uncommonly difficult to pronounce.

I have short hair and I don’t go to many concerts anymore, but I’m lifelong metal fan. I still stand on the couch and play air guitar to music that gets progressively heavier with each passing year, and I still reflexively give the sign of the devil when I see something I like. Like any metal fan worth a salt, I’m inexplicably and obstinately defensive about the subculture that surrounds what is one of my favorite types of music. Metallica may always have a place in my collection because they advanced thrash metal by leaps and bounds with their first three albums, but to me, that band died long ago.

Instead of acknowledging the abomination that Metallica has become over the last two decades, I find it less painful to pretend that the entire band died in the bus accident that killed Cliff Burton in 1986. As delusional as it may seem, I like to think that instead of admitting the tragedy, the record company replaced the band with a set of look-alike pop divas who were instructed to do the best they could to fill the shoes of the metal giants. As time wore on, the outer metal coating wore away, and the pop divas underneath inevitably shone through. If we look at Metallica’s history, the delusion can seem more logical than the reality, and may shine some light on the reasons why I won’t get sucked into buying their latest release, Death Magnetic.

Pel: This is a very simple Pong like game where you’re only objective is to keep the colored balls from getting past you. Considering the game only requires that you use the left and right arrow keys, and the paddle can only be in three positions (left, right or center), I thought I would’ve done a lot better.

Maybe you can do better than 5,242. If you miss three times, the game is over. Let me know how you do in the comments.

Good Luck!

The Life of Riley is a weekly post that details my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 455): Power Outage

We got up and had our traditional bacon and egg sandwiches before driving over to pick up #1GF!’s mom. I dropped #1GF! and her mom off at the pavilion to see one of the last live bands of the summer, and then took the car home and walked back. The band turned out to be country with a touch of rockabilly, and within five minutes of me showing up, a six plus foot tall guy dragged #1GF!’s mom onto the dance floor. He was so tall that he had to stoop down to dance with her. The way he was standing was almost obscene.

Once #1GF!’s mom had been safely returned to us, #1GF! and I left her mom and her friends to go sit on the beach. After a while, I decided to go in to the water, and #1GF! stayed on the sand. The surf was a bit choppy because of the wind, but I laid back, popped my toes out of the water and floated over the cresting waves. I looked over my toes at a sailboat and thought about how easy it is for me to float now. When I was young, I had to put my head way back and even put my arms over my head to get enough buoyancy to stay afloat. Now, I can have my head up enough to stare at at a sailboat on the horizon while my toes sit high in the open air. I know that means I have less muscle and more fat, but man, the new found floating ability is certainly worth it.

When floating lost it’s magic, I got out of the water and sat on my chair, picking out the sound of the country bass lines floating on the wind. I couldn’t really make out the songs too well from the beach, but it was still cool to hear a live band while sitting there. #1GF! went back up to spend some time with her mom, assuring me that it wasn’t to dance with the tall old dude who was after her mother. I definitely didn’t want to dance with any tall old dudes, so I sat on the beach reading my latest heavy metal book.

Once the band finished, we packed up and walked home to shower and have some iced tea. Spending ten minutes making iced tea and making sure you have lemon on hand before you go to the beach is well worth the effort when you get home. I called my parents and asked them if they wanted to join us for dinner, and they agreed to come down. Although we agreed on a time, #1GF! pointed out that we never actually said where we were going to meet. I think the definition of “regular hangout” is forgetting to say where you are meeting and knowing exactly where to be.

Even though there were empty tables, there was a 45 minute wait to get one. We ended up waiting for an hour, and not five minutes after we were seated, the power went out. The minute the place was black, one of the tables kicked into a chorus of “happy birthday”, which I found pretty amusing. We had waited so long that we sat there chatting away in the dark, hoping that the power would come back on. We hadn’t even gotten menus yet, so we were pretty much out of luck unless it came on pretty quickly. People who had ordered earlier were still being served, and one waitress managed to find a flashlight to provide a table just enough light that they could see their food.

And here’s where I started getting tired of sitting in the dark. The people behind us hadn’t even ordered their food, so they were in the same boat as us, yet they started bitching with “Where’s OUR flashlight?” as if someone had suddenly thrown a single toy into a room full of babies. It was one of those times where if I could have seen the menu, I would’ve liked to have ordered the table a round of tall, cold glasses of shut the fuck up. We’re all here in the dark, lady. Fuck. Give everyone a break and turn on your fucking camera phone light if you need to see your drink. Or take my camera phone. Or grab a pacifier from the table full of kids next to us. Just shut your fat, complaining yap.

If you’ve ever wanted to convert your old cassettes into MP3’s, then this is your lucky day. The process is simple enough for almost anyone to undertake, but it requires a fair amount of time and tends to produce MP3’s that are slightly noisier than those ripped directly from CD. There are, however, a few cases when it might be worth it:

1. You have more time than money,
2. You can’t possibly justify spending money to re-buy music that you’ll stop feeling nostalgic about next week,
3. You don’t want the judgmental eyes of the record store clerks to realize that you secretly still like Winger, or
4. Sadly, the band on your tape is out of print, never made the jump to CD, or broke up before getting a recording contract.

What You’ll Need

• A walkman that plays tapes.
• A set of headphones or speakers.
• A male to male 3.5mm stereo cable. You can usually pick up a stereo cable for a couple of bucks at an electronics store. You don’t need a fancy, brand name cable for this as long as you make sure that the cable is stereo and not mono. A stereo cable has two black lines on the tip, while a mono cable will only have one.
• Audacity, the free, open-source audio editor.
• A fair amount of time.

I was looking for a workout T-shirt today, and ran across the oldest concert t-shirt I own. When I put it on for these pictures, I was so concerned about it falling apart that I put it on over another t-shirt just to avoid getting deodorant on it. It’s from the 1988 Monsters of Rock tour and was a knockoff that I bought in the parking lot after the show because I didn’t have the money for an official one.

The three things that I can remember about the concert were:

1. It was the first time that my teenage metal ears heard Metallica, and I was completely blown away.
2. I got asked to go by my next door neighbor a few hours before the show because she got stuck with two extra tickets. I ended up playing tonsil hockey with a rather heavy young woman in the third row instead of paying attention to Van Hagar who played not more than ten feet away. Hey, for a pimply, four-eyed teenager with a mullet, it seemed like the right decision.
3. It was the source of the infamous, but partially incorrect mantra, “YOU SUCK, DAN DOKKEN!“.

Now, what’s your oldest T + three? Post a picture of your oldest concert T and give three things that you can remember about the show. If you can beat anything older than 1988, I will personally join you in a tall glass of Metamucil. Can anyone top 1988?

The Life of Riley is a weekly post that details my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 448): The Floors and The Wall

#1GF! and I went over to the house early to rip up all the paper that the contractor had used to cover what amazingly bad job the floor people did. They filled in holes with foam and silicone caulk, and left other gaping holes untouched. They didn’t bother to sand things down, leaving rings and discoloration, and didn’t bother blending in patches. They simply cut out big squares and replaced it with whatever wood they had laying around. They literally cut corners wherever they could. I wish that I could say that I was surprised, but all I can do is shake my head at this point.

When we were driving back from ripping up the paper, we saw all the people peppering the sidewalks in front of the local restaurants and lining their cars up to get into the parking lots. “Ha! Look at them all,” I said pointing at the long line of cars. “Can you imagine having to plan to come down here? You have to decide the day before, worry about the weather, get up early, pack the car… Fughetaboutit. I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t just pack up and move down here.”

That’s the nice thing about living at the beach. Sure, it’s a pain in the ass to get anywhere, but that’s sort of the point. Even vacations spent at home feel like you’re far away from the bustle to make vacations to a beach somewhere else feel sort of like a waste of money. Your leisure time becomes a string of unrelated snap decisions instead of a series of schedules and plans. Within moments, I realized that this isn’t something that everyone values enough to pull up stakes for an out of the way beach town, but when I said it, there was a part of me who really didn’t understand why people don’t just pack up and move here.

Despite being immensely popular, the unique sound that is associated with late 60’s / early 70’s soul was relatively short lived. Like Latin being replaced by Italian and Spanish, the soul sound of that time was overshadowed and eventually drowned beneath the waves of disco and pop R&B in the late 70’s and early 80’s. At a very early age, my parents cursed me with a love of classic soul, and like many fans, I have been left to listen to the same recordings over and over without ever expecting to hear something new from the genre.

Until now.

Deflector: You’re a space station that looks remarkably like the death star, and you’ve been surrounded by some hostile alien ships. You have no weapons of your own, so your only defense is to use your mouse to draw shields to use your enemies’ firepower against them.

I got 12,400 on level 5, so when you do better, be sure to drop your score in the comments.

Good Luck!