Things I've Done Over the Past Few Months

Aside from working 60+ hours a week, I've been lucky enough to go to some pretty cool stuff over the past couple of months.

It started with seeing Ben Folds at The Orpheum.

Actually not one of my favorite Ben Folds' shows, but it even a bad Ben show is pretty fun. He played his whole new album as his set (followed by an encore of solo and Ben Folds Five stuff), which would normally be ok, except the album hadn't come out yet.

Next up was the first Dear Leader show in a good while at TT the Bears.

I love me some Dear Leader. It'd been awhile since they'd played together, but it was just like old times.

I also was lucky enough to see Fleet Foxes play in Somerville. Such a great great sound.

Then, I got to go take advantage of my season tickets and see opening night of the Celtics, watching them raise the 17th NBA Championship banner. It was a moment that solidified to me that I've always been a bigger Cs fan than a Sox fan (though it's close). I loved being at opening day in 2005 when the Red Sox raised that first banner in 86 years. Being at the Garden and watching the Celtics raise the first banner in 22 years had a much more significant impact on me. Just the byproduct of growing up with the original Big Three, I guess.

Later, another one my favorite unknownish bands played *their* first show in a while. Stellastarr* rocked out at Great Scott and the gf and I got to watch from about 5 feet away.

Being 5 feet away left me with some temporary hearing issues, which thankfully went away the next night, where we went and saw The Decemberists at The Orpheum, and what might be my favorite show of the year.

A week or so later, we headed over to The Paradise to see an entirely different type of band, as Bang Camaro came and rocked our faces off.

Changing styles yet again, the gf surprised me and took me to see someone I consider quite possibly the greatest pop musician/performer of all time: Brian Wilson. While it's a bit depressing to see him perform these days, it's just such a monumental thing to be *seeing Brian Wilson.*

Finally, thanks again to my wonderful gf, we got some upgraded Celtics seats and rather than sitting in section 305 row 11, we sat in section 6 row 3.

And now I'm on vacation. So, expect to read some more from me.

As An Aside, A WordPress mod_security Fix

If all of a sudden your blogging client stops being able to send posts to your blog, it's possible your host turned on mod_security.

Try adding this to your .htaccess file:

	
	<files xmlrpc.php>
		secfilterengine off
	</files>

(hat tip to http://www.red-sweater.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=269)

Hell Week

Sparing the details, the last week of work (two weeks, really) have been hell. Pure, unrelenting, fire-and-brimstone hell. No sleep, working 'round the clock, fixing things that weren't broken 10 minutes before, hell.

I don't think I've ever quite been involved in a situation where as many things went south at the same time; many of which I had no control over. But there were things that I had control over (or at least nominal control over) that I didn't handle as adeptly as I could have or normally do. I've run through a whole range of emotions, lost sleep, lost weight, forgotten to eat meals (a couple of times I forgot to eat *all* day), and basically given up my life.

And in the end, I don't think it's worth it. I've basically missed out on 1/25th of my life this year working on this, and the payoff just isn't great enough for the stress.

I'm a startup type of guy, and I don't mind putting in the extra hours or the hard work. I like it, quite frankly. Because you're building something and you spend a bunch of time adding features and tweaking and improving and making something fun. This has been an exercise in replication, where I should only be involved peripherally in the work (but am far more involved for a variety of reasons), and the payoff isn't fun. It's rote and mundane.

Of course, this is my job, and it's not always this bad. It's just been this bad for a couple of weeks. But this is the sign I need to find a better work/life balance.

It's just too bad it took two weeks of no sleep, a loss of 10 pounds, and no life to figure it out.

Sleep .... sleep? What's That?

Over the past week of work, I've left work prior to 10pm exactly once, stayed beyond midnight twice, and am now on about my 4th day in a row without getting more than 3 hours of consecutive sleep.

I'm not enjoying this very much.

I'm still at work at 2:45am. This is what it looks like:

My head is shiny. And for those of you keeping track at home, you can barely tell my nose is broken unless you take a close look.

Harvey Danger + Rock Band = WHOMP ASS

Somehow the folks at Harmonix are brilliant enough to put a Harvey Danger song up as a downloadable track for Rock Band. The song is "Cream and Bastards Rise", which is off of HD's last album Little By Little. It's a good song.

It comes out this week. That's pretty awesome.

Also coming out: The Screaming Trees "Nearly Lost You."

Awesomeness.

PTBNL: The Top 10 Songs of 2007

Hey! I just finished this. It's only 10 months late. Come listen to my favorite songs of last year and wonder why it took me 10 months to finish and publish this.

Some hints: 2 British bands, 2 Boston bands, 3 other American bands, 3 Canadian bands.

Facial Reconstruction via an Elbow

I was playing my first Sunday basketball in a few months (we usually stop playing over the summer). I shocked myself a bit, as I wasn't playing awful (not great, but not nearly as bad as I expected).

About 30 minutes into the game, went up for a rebound and then felt my head jerk to the side and smelled the incredibly distinctive smell of blood. Instinctively, I pulled my hands up to my nose and they were immediately covered in blood. I made it down to the bathroom to clean up, where my nose continued to gush for about 20 minutes.

Even through the swelling, I could tell my nose was broken.

I made it to the hospital where they took care of me and told me "You are right. It's fractured. We really don't do much for broken noses any more. If you'd like me to put it back in place, I can try."

Of course, I said "yes", and they shoved my nose back into place. The swelling has steadily been going down, but it's still sore and it's still a little out of place.

I tried to find a picture to show the before and after. It's not drastic, but I think it's noticeable.

BEFORE

AFTER (reversed for some reason)

Note the light down the bridge of my nose. It's decidedly curved. If you could see my nostrils, you'd note that they're now angled and aren't symmetrical.

There you go--want a new nose? Get elbowed in the face.

There Goes My Free Time or "Oh noes! Rock Band 2!"

Well, there goes my life ...

Wha Happened?

So, long time no post.

A bunch of stuff has been going on.

I went on vacation to North Carolina with the girl and it was great.

Then we came back and went to Radiohead with Brett and The Wife. It was also pretty great, though they did not play enough off of The Bends.

Off then to Justin's wedding, that I was lucky enough to be a part of. And yes, this picture is from me standing there as a groomsman. I have no tact.

As a gift, we got these nifty beer holders.

Hulk Smash!

A few days later, off to my brother's wedding, where I think I was the tallest member of the wedding party. Or close to it. Which is a rarity. That's me on the far right.

The wedding was pretty great, particularly my niece and nephew who were adorable.

Somewhere along the line, either in an airport or just during some downtime, I played some poker on my iPhone and did this:

Mixed in there was a bunch of work, which has been better, although it's been kicking my ass. A good ass kicking, I think, but an ass kicking nonetheless.

I'm hoping to get back in the swing of things. I think I've got a post building up about the election and the conventions, but I'm waiting for my thoughts to settle a bit. Maybe something about Google Chrome. Or maybe something about Generation Kill (which I'm currently one episode from finishing). I've got a lot to write about--just need to find the time to do so.

On top of all that, over the next few weeks, there's a whole bunch of shows I'm heading to:
9/16 -- Roger Clyne
9/23 -- Weezer and Tokyo Police Club
9/26 -- Ben Folds
9/27 -- Dear Leader
10/6 -- Fleet Foxes

Whew.

Quick iCal/Google Calendar Sync Update

So, Google announced recently that it would support CalDAV syncing with iCal, which means if you update an entry in iCal (or Google Calendar), they'll be in sync within a few minutes. Awesome.

Unfortunately, it meant that my previous script iteration would now continually add alarms, leading to each entry having 3 or 4 alarms. Turns out that updating a local iCal calendar and adding an alarm actually updates that same info at GCal. Which is awesome (but was unexpected).

So, I made a small tweak to the script, which makes it run a bit faster and makes sure that you only get one alarm on an entry:

Try this instead:

tell application "iCal"
  set theCalendars to {"Cal1", "Cal2"}
  repeat with theCurrentValue in theCalendars
	tell calendar theCurrentValue
	  set theEvents to every event
	  repeat with theCurrentEvent in theEvents
	    tell theCurrentEvent
	      if not (exists sound alarm of theCurrentEvent) then
		   make new sound alarm at end /
		   with properties {trigger interval:-15}
		  end if
	    end tell
	  end repeat
	end tell
  end repeat
end tell

That basically means it won't add another sound alarm if the entry already has one. Much handier. In fact, you could just take that script and have it run every few hours (either cron'd or via iCal), and not have to worry about the iTunes Sync script.

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