Had a good time last night.

I did a quick run to the wine store to pick up a couple of bottles of a favorite Nebbiolo to take with me to a couple of "day after Thanksgiving" parties that I've been invited to (no, alas, the cutie that works at the wine store was not working last night).

Deege and I went to Garnett's on Park for dinner. Not a bad place. I went there once when it was Table 7, but I like the food better now. It's owned by the same folks as Ipanema, although this place is not strictly vegetarian. As a matter of fact, there were only a few options for veggie folks, but what I had was good - a "WBLT" -- a white bean lettuce and tomato. The white bean and garlic spread they used on it was very tasty.

Then, we went to hear Pennyshaker at Bogart's. The lead singer had a good voice, and the musicians did a great job as well. They were giving away one of their CDs, so I picked one up. Ripped it to iTunes this morning, so I can give the original CD to Deege later.

Right now, I'm doing some laundry while I wait for it to warm up enough for a bike ride.

I think I might have posted about this before, but I have always liked this quirky song by the Bobs --
Spontaneous Human Combustion

Poof! There goes another one! LOL!


Here's the iTunes link to the song.

I never pictured an Hasidic Reggae singer...


And I liked this one --


Youtube is good for some things, but one thing it is NOT good for is finding clips of songs from TV shows. I wanted to find a clip of Willow singing to Tara in one of the Buffy episodes -- I could find the song, but not the actual clip.

I was a little disappointed last night that I didn't make it out of the house. Earlier in the day, I did not have plans, but then a Facebook friend popped up with the idea of going to the Camel to hear a jazz band. I have been meaning to get to the Camel (I hear good vegetarian options), so I was excited to go.

Unfortunately, his daughter has the H1N1 flu, and started having more nausea, etc. than expected last night. So, they took her to the ER to have it checked. So, he couldn't make it.

C'est la vie, of course, so I just got some stuff done around the house.


Heading out tonight to celebrate All Hallow's Eve with friends. One thing I would like to do is to head over to Gallery5 for their Carnival of 5 Fires...the vibe of it resonates with me.

I never really get a costume...I always just buy a mask and wear it. I have this attraction/thing for faces, and I guess the mask plays on that attraction. If you walk around my house, you'll see that a lot my decoration involves faces hanging on the wall.


I've been listening to The Dandy Warhols lately -- I downloaded "Welcome to the Monkey House" from Amazon last night.

The Mac is generally pretty easy to use. But I just ran into something that made me wrinkle up my nose.

Quicktime X has a sound recording feature. Great, right?

But the default is to record from the microphone. Ewww...your recording includes all the background hiss that microphones pick up.

Not a solution.

After a Google search (what did we do BEFORE Google??), I found that the way to do this is to use Soundflower. I already had Soundflower installed because iShowU (a very useful app) uses Soundflower.

After you have Soundflower installed, open up Sound Preferences --


Set the output to Soundflower --


Then, start your audio recording in Quicktime --


And from the dropdown twistie, select Soundflower as your input --




When you are all done recording, use Sound Preferences to set the output back to your normal output (in my case the headphones).

So far so good. I'm okay with this part of the process, even if it is a couple extra steps. It's okay with me that I use a third party tool to re-route sound from the speakers to use as input to Quicktime (especially since I get to avoid the hiss from the external microphone).

But here's where things turned not okay.

When you re-route the sound, you really re-route it. I mean to say, you can't hear the sound play while you're recording!

Um, how the heck am I supposed to start and stop at certain places if I can't hear it?

Another nose wrinkle...

So, score one for Windows, right? I don't remember having any problem recording system sound and listening to it through the speakers at the same time!

Anyways, here's my brief recording...I was listening to Daft Punk, lol! As you can see, I sort of cut it off midway because I couldn't hear when I got to a good breaking point! Daft Punk.

So, I'm listening to Pandora tonight on my walk like I always do, and I make the mistake of thumbing up a song that I like, which doesn't sound like a mistake, right? It WAS a song that I like, but NOT one I wanted to listen to right then. So, I thumbed it up, and pressed skip. Long story short, Pandora played song after song after song of that same genre, until I had run out of skips (you can only skip so many each hour in Pandora).

So, I switched to my local songs...but as I was walking, it kept making a Bloop-Bloop sound and Bloop-Bloop skipping to the Bloop-Bloop next Bloop-Bloop song...

I couldn't figure out what was happening...The iPod app on the iPhone has a "Shake to Shuffle" setting, and evidently I was walking vigorously enough to make the Bloop-Bloop iPhone switch to a new song!

****
Have you ever tagged yourself in a Facebook picture, even though it was not the best pic, but you liked a particular feature?

I tagged myself in this pic from a reception the other night at the Gay Community Center, because I liked how my legs looked in it, lol! I mean, my eyes are closed and everything, but I still tagged myself in it! Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, lol!

I wasn't going to post this because it was kinda stupid...but then I got sorta mesmerized by its weirdness...

Went to dinner at Starlite with D tonight...the food was good, and had a good time talking. We walked around Carytown afterwards, just to talk...

This song has been in my head for days, lol!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNVmt4466WI

I'm a Pandora user -- I listen to music A LOT. I could give the TV up long before I gave up my ability to listen to music.

I use Pandora most often on the iPhone when I'm out walking, but sometimes on the desktop. It is a decent service -- streaming music that is "similar" to whatever song(s) or artist(s) that you used to "seed" your "station." I've posted about it before.

Pandora originally started as the "Music Genome Project."

Anyways, the founder of Pandora (Tim Westergren) is traveling having meetups around the country.

Tonight, he was in Richmond. Here's his picture --


He gave a talk and question answering session at the VCU Theater on Grace -- what I call the old "Lee Art Theater" -- the porn theater from years ago, lol! I got dragged in there once by a straight friend to watch a flick, but that is a different story. Oy...

Tim gave a mini talk followed by a lot of questions.

It was pretty darned interesting sometimes. If I remember correctly, he said that at some points, Pandora makes up 1.5% of internet traffic! I wish I had recorded some of the stats -- the tens of thousands of people who sign up for Pandora every day...and the hundreds of thousands of existing users they have, and the huge number of iPhone Pandora users.

One of the things he said is that he (/Pandora) is trying to create is a "Musician Middle Class" -- where a musician can earn a middle class living from being a musician. He made that statement in the context of saying that Pandora does not take into account popularity in its choice of songs -- it is strictly based on music similarity, based on the "genes" that make up its decision engine.

I am glad that my friend suggested we go. And I got a free t-shirt out of it. And the Chipotle down the street provide free burritos, including some veggie burritos :)

Some friends and I went to dinner tonight to catch up. Then, I went down to the amphitheater at Dogwood Dell to hear Plunky and the Oneness of Being. Plunky has been around RVA a long time...

Went to see the Indigo Girls at Lewis Ginter tonight with D and his friend H.

Tonight, to show support for Deege, I went to see the Richmond (Gay) Men's Chorus sing since Deege is a new member. None of my friends wanted to go with (or they had other plans), so I went alone, figuring I would find someone to sit with...or not...whichever.

So, I got there and didn't see anyone I knew at first and was sitting alone. Then, I saw and got up and sat with O. Yes, that O.

O is dating someone else now -- and the guy sings in the chorus.

I also saw someone in the audience I used to do business with, who was there with his partner. This guy was a client of mine when I was a consultant. And evidently, this guy is friends with O's new boyfriend.

The concert was enjoyable -- they did a melody of '70s songs -- including dressing and (more or less) dancing like it was the 70s. One of the soloists (for Donna Summer's 'Hot Stuff') was really good.

So afterwards, O and his boyfriend, the guy I had done business with and his partner, Deege and his friend C and I went to Tarrant's. It was a bit weird hanging with O and his new boyfriend, so I was glad that Deege was there to be my wingman and C my wingwoman :) I don't think I would have gone if they had not been coming.

Now, get this shit...There were 6 gay men and 1 straight woman at the table. FOUR, (FOUR!!!) of the gay men had been married to women at some point. At least 2 had children. I leaned over to Deege at one point and asked if we were the only gay men at the table who had not been married to women! And, so it was.

I think the lead singer of Incubus -- Brandon Boyd -- has gotten cuter as he gets older!

This is from the video for Black Heart Inertia -- on Youtube here.

He doesn't have those black things in his ears now, but the holes are still there.

Some random things for today --

Keys

Ya know, I just realized that I have keys on my key chain that I don't recognize!

I happened to look at my keys today and realized that I never returned the keys to my last place of employment. So, I've been toting them around for a while now.

While I was at it, I looked through the rest of the keys and found two that I don't recognize! I'm not throwing them away because I figure they must fit something I own somewhere!

2nd Nephew Marriage

I found out today that my nephew and his girlfriend went to the "Justice of the Peace" -- I don't think they are called that anymore -- and got married yesterday! They'll do a more formal wedding later, but they wanted to get the marriage performed before my other nephew ships out to sea again.

And they now can tie their marriage to around Valentine's Day.

Urinal Deodorizer

Last night and today, I have been noticing a "smell" in my kitchen. It reminded me of those deodorizer cakes that you see in the urinal at a men's bathroom -- not the most pleasant smell for a kitchen, right?

So, I wandered around opening cabinets searching and sniffing. Yesterday, when I went to Costco, I decided to try the Costco brand of dishwasher detergent. Well, it turns out the Costco brand smells a bit like urinal cake...

The smell was strong enough that I could detect it as I came down the stairs -- long before I got to the kitchen!

It was cheap though -- 2 containers for the same price as one of the name brand! I hope my dishes don't smell like that after I wash them! I think I may have gotten what I paid for...

Plans for Today

I'm doing laundry and trying to get motivated to go on a walk. It's not as warm today as it has been, so I'm sluggish.

Tonight, I'll be seeing a play with some friends. Probably dinner before hand.

New India.Arie CD

I have been a fan of India.Arie for a while. When I have been a fan of someone for a while, I tend to just automatically buy their next release. Yesterday, I bought "Testimony, vol 2" on iTunes.

In this case, I was a bit disappointed. There is more religious imagery in the songs this time (maybe the title of the CD should have clued me in, yes?). Religious imagery is always true of India.Arie in some of her songs, but there is just a bit too much for me this time. Also, I didn't feel like she had the same level of catchy songs that she's had in the past.

I would rather have saved my money this time!

LJ-Sec

I hesitate to recommend this software, because I had one issue with it. It worked well enough, and it might work for you as well.

Livejournal already provides a "mass security" change page that lets you change security of entries, based on date and their current security level. But that is a pretty blunt instrument. It doesn't allow you to update entries based on any search criteria.

That's where LJ-Sec comes in. LJ-Sec let's you search for entries, and then change the security level for just those entries.

It works well enough, except for one problem I ran into.

If you have tags that have an ampersand (&) in them, it will split the tag, and you'll end up with some entries in the old tag ("food & drink") and some entries with a new tag ("food").

Not cool.

But if you don't have any tags with the ampersand, then I think it would be okay to use this tool.

One other thing -- it is Windows-only, which I find annoying. And I didn't like the "VB 6" look and feel.

We've been listening to this song today...Happy Friday!

I like Erykah Badu's video for Honey (iTunes link). It's the only track I bought off the CD -- none of the rest of the preview clips from the CD spoke to me.

In the video, you see her singing from what look like the covers of old record albums. I liked watching the (headless) shopper whip various albums out of the stacks and see her singing on the cover.

And a Planet of the Apes reference at the end! What more can I ask for? Link to the video here --> http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=49249120

















Speaking of honey, I'm going with my honey tonight, O, to burn up yet another Christmas gift card -- dessert at the Cheesecake Factory!

I have always liked this song -- Mon Amie La Rose. I ran across these videos on YouTube.

I think I just like it because of the idea of the rose regretting that she had grown old overnight, but had been the most beautiful rose in the garden.


Here's an older version from the '60s --

English translation

http://artists.letssingit.com/natacha-atlas-lyrics-mon-amie-la-rose-english-translation-9l4k8s8

Chorus 1:
We are truly insignificant
And that's what my friend the rose
Told me this morning

Verse 1:
I was born at dawn
Baptised in dew
I blossomed
In the rays of the sun
Happy and in love
I closed my petals at night
And when I awoke I was old.
Yet I had been beautiful
Yes, I was the most beautiful
Of all the flowers in your garden

Chorus 1

Verse 2
See, the God that made me
Now makes me bow my head
And I feel I'm falling
And I feel I'm falling
My heart is almost bare
I have a foot in my grave
Already I am nothing
You admired me only yesterday
And I shall be dust
Forever, tomorrow

Chorus 2:
We are truly insignificant
And my friend the rose
Died this morning

Verse 3
Last night the moon
Kept vigil over my friend
And in a dream I saw
Her soul, dancing
Dazzling and naked,
Above the heavens,
Smiling on me.
Let those who can, believe
But I need Hope
Or else I am nothing

repeat chorus & verse 2

Lyrics

http://www.unc.edu/depts/europe/conferences/Veil2000/lyrics/natacha.htm

On est bien peu de choses. Et mon amie la rose me l'a dit ce matin. A l'aurore je suis née, baptisée de rosée. Je me suis épanouie. Heureuse et amoureuse. Au rayon du soleil.

Je me suis fermée la nuit. Me suis reveillée vieillie. Pourtant j'etais trés belle. Oui j'etais la plus belle. Des fleurs de ton jardin.

Ou est bien peu de choses. Et mon amie la rose me l'a dit ce matin. Vois le dieu qui m'a faite. M'a fait courber la tête.

Et je sens que je tombe. Et je sens que je tombe mon coeur est presque nu j'ai le pied dans la tombe. Déjà je ne suis plus. Tu m'admirais que hier et je serais poussière. Pour toujours demain.

On est bien peu de choses. Et mon amie la rose morte ce matin. La lune cette nuit, a veillé mon amie. Moi en rêve j'ai vu. Eblouissant les nuits.

Son âme qui dansait. Bien-au déjà du vu. Et qui me sourait. Croit celui qui peut croire. Moi j'ai besoin d'espoir. Sinon je ne suis rien.

On est bien peu de choses et mon amie la rose me l'a dit ce matin. Vois de dieu qui m'a faite. M'a fait courber la tête. Et je sens que je tombe.

Et je sens que je tombe mon coeur est presque nu. J'ai le pied dans la tombe. Déjà je ne suis plus. Tu m'admirais que hier. Et je serais poussière. Pour toujours demain.

A friend of mine really likes Maxwell, and she just bought her ticket for when he comes to Richmond.

I like him too -- usually, I'll buy his CDs...

Here is his performance on BET recently. He still has his voice!