This song is actually called “Death or Glory” but way back in the early college years Vanlandw changed the id3 tags on the mp3.
It’s arguably the first “metal” song I ever heard. And I do actually like it.
And, now Last.fm thinks it is named after my brother. Check out the pic below and notice the “now listening”. GG.
http://www.last.fm/music/Six+Feet+Under/_/Death+Or+Vanbergs
Many things are changing lately… and I don’t even want to go into details.
But what I’ve begun to realize is not so much that things are changing, but that it’s all happening so fast. There will always be part of my being that mercilessly grips onto college mentality which craves for extreme video game sessions, staying up late to watch movies, generally causing random mischief, and just being part of a great group of friends.
Changes that affect this paradigm are not “bad” per se, but nevertheless they do present a mildly uncertain future. The notion of these changes unsettles me a bit, makes me uncomfortable, and even a little scared. I guess I can say that I do not like change very much.
I suppose the world needs the turn-and-cough check every once in awhile.
So I embrace the coming change, and my glass is half full. Really, nobody says it better than 2pac
This weekend has been fairly “productive” – no matter what your definition of the word may consist of.
On Saturday I changed out all the brake pads on my car. This is the first time I’ve really had to do any real maintenance on my car. I’ve had it for almost 5 years now and its just about to tick 50k miles, so I figured it was time to do some work on it. That, and the giant red “Brake” indicator on my dashboard whenever I was speeding up/slowing down. The light was coming on because my brake fluid reservoir was right at the minimum level. Since I was pretty sure I didn’t have a leak of any kind, I figured this was because my brake pads were getting too slim and the pistons inside the calipers had to be compressed alot further than normal, hence using more of the brake fluid.
This was definitely correct, because with new brake pads my brake fluid level is perfectly even on the full line.
All in all, the job took me about 1.5 hours – and the sets of front and rear pads ran me 51 dollars TOTAL for all pads. I definitely didn’t mind saving some money doing the job myself considering the new Goodyear F1 tires I just bought.
Saturday night into Sunday was still productive… Just in a different way. Vanlandw and Vanbergs joined me for a fairly intense video gaming session which amounted to knockout matches, rush 2 crash fests, and running through the entirety of Super Mario 3 in a single sitting which took surprisingly long. I think we went to bed finally at about 5 am.
Capping off the weekend of general vanhood was a vantastic breakfast at the Fleetwood diner, napping during football, and actually not hating the opening episodes of 24 season 7… Overall, thumbs up all around.
In the last 4 days, I have shoveled my driveway 7 times.
There are piles of snow in my back yard that are literally taller than I am. My back is utterly destroyed. My arms and legs are tightened and sore. My car has gotten stuck 3 separate times. The wind blew the cover off my grill and it is currently covered in feet of snow.
I realize this is ‘mother nature’ and there’s nothing anyone can do but deal with it as best they can. But I am incredibly angry about how much snow we have. I have lived in Michigan for my entire life and I cannot recall having to deal with this much snow.
Tonight I resisted the urge to slam my shovel into the driveway with all my human might and destroy it with unbridled malice; because after I finally finished shoveling my seemingly never ending driveway, the end I had started on already had over an inch of new snow.
Ef you, whoever makes snow… I will find you sooner or later and we will have a very confrontational discussion.
This week I decided to take up the task of setting up my old laptop as a “media center” for my 42 inch rear projection television.
The program “Boxee” is what sparked my curiosity and made me start pursuing this.
Boxee is a media center application based on the source code of Xbox Media Center (or, XBMC). It has one simple and clean interface to various media outlets – including Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, Flickr, ComedyCentral, CNN, etc. PLUS it will scan and index any media you have stored locally. Bottom line, it makes a pretty sweet application especially when you have an open laptop to plug into your television.
At first, I fought Ubuntu linux trying to make the s-video output work. Literally fought it. And I lost. This was most unfortunate because Boxee on linux is supposedly quite a bit more stable than Boxee currently is on Windows.
Finally though, I had to just give up and install Windows XP. I finally got an invite to Boxee (if anyone else would like one, let me know) and I downloaded the Windows version immediately. My sheer enjoyment quickly turned to utter disgust because the lesser stable Windows build will not even start on my laptop. It just core dumps immedately leaving a indecipherable message in my event logs. CRAP.
Anyway… All was not lost. I have a closed laptop hooked to my television that allows me to stream Netflix, Hulu, and is running XBMC. I must say – it works pretty dam nicely. I took it one step further by enabling Wake on LAN for the laptop; so I can shut it down when it’s not in use – but the laptop sits closed nicely and fits well between my HD receiver and my modded Xbox.
I can’t believe I didn’t think about doing this sooner… this old laptop has been sitting around for like 6 months completely un-used…
PS – WordPress 2.7 is just awesome. All should install it immediately.