Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

Yesterday, I found out from a co-worker that one of the property managers of my office building went to the nest of one of the Canada geese that nested on one of the islands in our parking lot, and drilled holes in the eggs.

My co-worker wants to leave nasty notes on the property manager's windshield.

Me, I'll hope for karmic retribution -- Harm None, the Rule of Three, and all that.

Slowly and methodically, I'm changing the email address on all the mailing lists I'm subscribed to. At least I'm giving myself until June 1.

Does anyone know if I can do a global change on Yahoo!Groups? Or if I have to change my subscription on each list by hand? (Ugh.) I just changed the address in my profile. [Updated 17:50] It's not exactly a global change -- I had to do 4 at a time -- but all 24 of my Yahoo!Groups have been changed.

Tonight I finished configuring my system to dial my new ISP (fuse.net aka Cincinnati Bell) and setting up Thunderbird to download mail to it. I'll use that email address for purely personal email. Most of my email lists I'm subscribed to will go to gmail.

Shout-outs: Happy birthday mrgoodwraith!

As part of a last-ditch effort to fix a problem I was having at work -- it was taking the Tomcat server 30 minutes to start up on my system -- I deleted the project I was working on and re-created it from the Subversion code repository. It now takes about 3 minutes to restart, and that's normal.

I wonder if this is a metaphor for other areas of my life.

And this means that I won't have to roll back from Vista to XP on my computer at work.

Early [evening], April 4
A shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride...

--U2, Pride (In The Name Of Love)

(Yes, I know the lyrics say are "Early morning", but the event happened in the evening.)

Shout-outs: Happy birthday kyttn and dagonell!

Several years ago, EMI Records put out a series of CDs that featured some rather obscure hits from the 1980s. Some of the songs were from one-hit or two-hit wonders. Some of the songs barely made it into the American or British top 40. And there are a few better-known hits in the collection.

The series is named "Living In Oblivion: The 80s Greatest Hits". While I technically wouldn't call them "greatest hits" -- most such compilations are based on sales, airplay, and chart position -- many of the songs were familiar to me, and some were brand new. These are the songs that rarely get any airplay nowadays. [Updated 16:30] Here's a discography.

The local library had volumes 1-3. Listening to them, they brought back some great memories: high school, college, the fraternity house, parties, going to clubs, and road trips. Thanks to half.com, I'm in the process of obtaining the 5-CD set, disc by disc. If I can avoid it, I won't pay full price for CDs ever again.

If you were to come up with a CD compilation of obscure 80s hits, what songs would you include?

My inner soundtrack for this afternoon, based on one of the things going on in my life right now. I think this song is quite apropos for the situation.

( Lyrics inside the cut-tag. )

...I'll take a quick 5-minute break. Usually the server comes up in about 2 minutes; for the past couple of days it's been taking 15-20 minutes to come up.

I could go to the UU church later tonight to play some board and card games. Or I could have dinner with the Usual Suspects. Or I can just stay home.

This weekend, I need to continue going through Box 81 and the receipts from 1997. I might even bring a small pile of stuff to go through to the Bismarck meeting on Saturday night.

I just found out that a friend-of-an-LJ-friend is in town visiting family. I sent them a message, but they probably won't get it until they're home. Besides, I don't think that person knows me well enough.

Sometimes I feel like I'm in exile or isolation. And sometimes I feel like I spend too much time socializing.

My current de-cluttering project has been another box of printouts from 1988. This one had old email messages and Usenet posts. It's tough getting rid of the old correspondence. But some of these folks I haven't seen or heard from since then.

What I've saved so far: An April Fool's joke I posted to rec.music.gaffa nearly 20 years ago. Even though the first letters of the first 10 lines spelled "April Fool", a lot of people missed that and mistook it for real. (I should scan it, maybe OCR it, and repost it here.)

This is why I don't read many books these days; I'm too busy reading through old stuff I probably should get rid of.

Shout-outs: Happy birthday tigertoy!

So there's another new radio station in town: Fly 92.9. Their slogan is "We play anything".

I'd like to challenge that.

In the past two weeks of listening to them in the car, I've yet to hear any Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Bjork, Gowan, Kim Mitchell, Saga, Marillion, Renaissance, the Grateful Dead, Phish, or John Valby. And I probably never will because these artists are too obscure for the average American radio listener. Either that or they've never had any top 40 hits in the States. (Okay, there's "Running Up That Hill" and "Touch of Grey", but that's about it.)

Despite my quibble, I do like listening to the station. They're not limited to any particular genre or era. (I've noticed the Eagle doesn't play anything released after 1979.) I've heard songs on there I haven't heard in years, or have never heard at all. But it seems that the only limiting factor in air play is that the song must have cracked the top 40.

I'll keep listening. And when I get tired of it, I'll change the station.