Okay, this is another reason I respect the hell out of Nine Inch Nails.

D'Arque Bishop

Well, this is certainly interesting.

Trent Reznor (aka, Nine Inch Nails) has certainly been very open to getting his music out there and also seeing what others could do with it. When With Teeth came out, he released the sources to some of the songs in GarageBand format, so that fans could remix his songs and see what they could do with them. Well, I was making one of my occasional checks of my MySpace, and there was a bulletin from NIN there announcing the existence of remix.nin.com, which is… well, let me repost the bulletin and let them say for themselves. :-)

– Download multitrack audio files for NIN songs and create your own remixes
– Create a profile and post your mixes for the world to hear
– Listen to, rate, and discuss thousands of other fan-made and official remixes
– Find remixes based on your specific tastes
– Create custom playlists and share them with other fans
– Download full quality MP3s of every song on the site
– Subscribe to any playlist as a podcast, and get automatic MP3 updates you can sync to your iPod

Oh, and it’s all free. Enjoy!

Damn. Honestly, I can’t think of another big band off the top of my head that would do anything close to this. I took a quick listen over there and was impressed by what I heard. In a way, it makes me feel guilty that I haven’t bought Year Zero yet; I try to make a point to buy every major NIN release that comes out. On the other hand, I imagine the record company suits are frothing in anger right now. Ah, well… I’ll have to keep an eye on the site and see. I just wish I had the talent or ability to do remixes like that… :-)

Looking back at the weekend…

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

Well, it’s been a long Thanksgiving weekend, but tonight it all comes to an end. I go back to work in the morning and the usual cycle begins again. Ah, well, it was fun while it lasted… when I wasn’t doing database maintenance for work, that is.

I did manage to get out and about yesterday, meeting up with Dave and Louie. Louie had declared the day a day of Japanese food, which neither Dave nor I were about to dispute. When I got to Louie’s apartment, I presented Dave with a sort-of gift: when he had called Thursday night, he had mentioned that he needed an A/V switchbox. As it so happened, I had one I was no longer using (I had replaced it with one that supported component jacks), so I brought it to him so that he could use it. Dave had a birthday present for me, making it even more of a Doctor Who birthday: the movie Dr. Who and the Daleks. From there, we all headed to a sushi restaurant Louie knew of off Richmond called Oishii. We had a very delicious meal of sushi there, though Dave and I both agreed when Louie said, “Now, as good as that was… can you understand why after four days of this [in Japan] I went and got donuts?” From there we went to Border’s so Dave could look for a particular DVD, which he ended up not finding. As soon as we left Border’s, we went back to Louie’s apartment.

Once we got to Louie’s apartment, Dave and Louie sat down and watched the Family Guy episode that parodied Star Wars, while I got on Louie’s computer and did some stuff for work. (I have to admit, I’ve never gotten into either Family Guy or American Dad, so when Dave and Louie sit down to watch I generally go into the next room). Once my work was done and Family Guy was finished, we sat down and flipped between different football games until 7:30 PM came around, at which point we left for the dinner portion of our “Japan food day”; Louie had made reservations for us at Benihana. Once again, the food at Benihana was superb. :-) We all had the Benihana Yakisoba dinner, which consists of noodles with chicken and vegetables. After dinner (which was interrupted by a power outage at one point), we went back to the apartment, and watched some more football, and had drinks as well. Fortunately I had left a bottle of Jose Cuervo margarita there from a bit back, and it was still good. :-) At 11:30 PM or so, I made my farewells as I had some stuff to do for work before bed, and made my way home.

It was a good thing I had no problems on my way home. The one big issue with my cell phone is that because it’s a 3G device, it’s a pig for battery power. When I left the house around 11:30 AM, the device was fully charged. Before we left for Benihana, I plugged it into Louie’s PC to give it a bit of a boost, and got 8% out of it. As I left Louie’s, I noticed the low battery warning. The device died on the way home. Looks like I’ll need to start carrying my old car charger (which will work with this phone) in the car’s central console…

As for today, it’s been relatively uneventful. I finished all of the database maintenance I needed to do for work, and also got to sit down and watch Dr. Who and the Daleks. It’s certainly different from the original TV series, but I rather liked it. For those not familiar, the movie is an adaptation of the second serial of the TV series. The main differences are that “Dr. Who” (played by Peter Cushing) is an eccentric human inventor who just invented TARDIS, and both Susan and Barbara are his granddaughters. Dave actually put it best: it’s a good way of watching the original story without having to see the entire original seven-part serial. In my experience you can’t watch the original serial all in one go.

As for this week, I don’t have much planned outside of work. I’m hoping to get some videoconferencing time in with Misty now that my webcam is operational, but I may have to coax her into it. Otherwise… we’ll see what happens this week. :-)

The war at home continues.

D'Arque Bishop

About a year ago, I posted about the conflict between the cats and dogs in this house. Specifically, the two cats (Gus and Ringo) rule the upstairs, while the dogs (Star and Chase) have control of the downstairs. Other than that, the two groups rarely interact; Gus and Ringo are smart enough to avoid the dogs and know that Star hates them (Chase is indifferent on his own but usually takes Star’s lead). For their part, the dogs can’t get to the cats because of the child’s gates in the kitchen and at the foot of the stairs. This doesn’t stop Star from barrelling from the kitchen to the foot of the stairs when let out, hoping to get a glimpse of either cat.

Well, things got more interesting yesterday.

As I was coming downstairs for breakfast this morning, Mom told me the story. Apparently yesterday after I made my way over to Louie’s apartment, Mom was in the kitchen sorting out her Christmas decorations. One of her great hobbies/projects every year is to completely redecorate the living room and dining room in a Christmas theme. Anyway, she happened to glance from where she was into the dining room, and Gus was sitting in there, in plain view yet well away from the gate, as if to say, “Yeah, I’m here. So what?”

A couple of minutes later, Star trotted past the dining room entrance from the kitchen and glanced over… and froze dead when she saw Gus standing there. Predictably, she then went berzerk, launching her self at the gate and raising holy hell over the cat that DARED show his face. At that point, Chase came over to see what was going on and started barking at Gus too. Gus hissed and spat at them, and wandered back over to the stairs.

Once at the stairs, Gus sat there and meowed. Of course, the sound of Gus meowing sent Star and Chase into a frenzy. Then, as soon as they calmed down… Gus meowed again, setting them off again. This continued for about another half-dozen times, until Gus got reinforcements, so to speak. His meow was quickly followed by another one from Ringo upstairs. Once again, this only served to make Star and Chase even madder. :-)

I suppose it’s something we’re going to have to get used to at this time of year. Once the decorations come up, in particular the Christmas tree, Gus considers the downstairs his area and will come down to sit under the tree. He considers the living room HIS area at that time of year, dogs be damned. It doesn’t help that Gus is apparently learning that if he wants to be downstairs, he can as long as he KNOWS the dogs are confined to the kitchen. I just have to hope it’s not going to escalate any further than it already has…

Happy Thanksgiving, and all that…

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

So, it’s the end of another quiet Thanksgiving here at the house. I can’t say it’s been TOO eventful, really; just a quiet day off for the most part. I got up around about my usual time, had my morning coffee, and did the usual morning routine. Thanksgiving dinner for us happened around 1 PM. Unlike a lot of families and people I know, Thanksgiving is always a small, quiet affair at the house. Our closest relatives live in California, and we don’t really ever get a chance to go see them. That’s just my dad’s brother and his family, including his married daughter. The bulk of the rest of our family lives in England, and they celebrate Thanksgiving on July 4th. So, unless we invite guests over like Louie and his mom, it’s just the three of us. We had an appetizer of shrimp cocktail for myself, and herring in sour cream for my parents. For the actual entree, we had turkey breast, dressing, mashed potatoes, peas, and gravy. :-) Dessert consisted of a choice between pumpkin pie and cheesecake. As is traditional with us, for the most part, we chose the pumpkin pie. After that, I went upstairs and slept for a few hours. :-)

I was productive this evening, though. My desk has been a disaster area for ages, and I figured it was time I did something about it. While on the phone with Dave (who called to chit-chat and catch up), I cleaned off my desk itself and gave it a good dusting. Once I got Dave off the phone, the REAL grunt work began: I shut down the PC, and began removing it and ALL of the peripherals and wiring. While doing so, I removed several items that had been obsoleted and needed to go, such as a VGA cable for my monitor (since upgrading my machine in late 2005, I’ve been using DVI) and a PS/2 extension cable (my keyboard and mouse are both Bluetooth). I also finally removed the old four-port USB hub that had been causing my main PC to crash on boot. After removing everything out and then dusting and vacuuming, I put the needed equipment back in. While doing so, I went ahead and took the time to set up my new four-port USB hub (the one shaped like the TARDIS). After getting it set up, I couldn’t resist the chance to take an amusing picture of it, so I grabbed my cell phone and my talking Dalek toy…

A Dalek ponders a smaller TARDIS…

You get the idea the Dalek is thinking, “Somehow, I was expecting it to be somewhat bigger…” :-)

As for the Dalek-shaped webcam, I’ll get that set up tomorrow. I’m not quite looking forward to tomorrow; as much as I want to avoid the Black Friday traffic, I have to go to Office Depot to see if I can get a set of inexpensive computer speakers for my main PC to replace my old ones. I don’t need anything fancy, really, so a set of $30 Logitech speakers would work fine. The subwoofer on my old one blew a diode, and as such is making a rather tremedous hum when plugged in. Ah, well… I’m just hoping it won’t be TOO much of a big hassle.

For now, though, I’m just going to run downstairs and get a beer, and then think of the answers Kerri requested in the last post. Of all the people I expected to answer, she wasn’t one of them, so I actually have to think about what I want to ask her and tell her. :-) Ah, well… at least it’ll be a relaxing rest of the evening.

Yet another meme stolen from Jenn. Unfortunately, I have to work with this one.

D'Arque Bishop4 Comments

1. Tell you why I friended you.
2. Associate you with something – fandom, a song, a colour, a photo, etc.
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I’ve always wanted to know about you.
6. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
7. In return, you must post this in your LJ.

Comment, and I will comment back with the name of the fictional character (picture if youre lucky) that most reminds me of you. Then post the same in your journal and join in the fun!

Obviously, parts #1 and #6 are only going to apply to the LiveJournal users… heh.

All right, I feel tons better…

D'Arque Bishop

Yesterday was another work day for me, save for coworkers being nice and understanding when I was sleepy or seemed to doze off while waiting for software to update on their machines. (I never actually slept, mind you. I just went into a “standby” state, if you will.) However, when 5 PM came around, I hit the road and made my way home. A call on the way home confirmed that Mom had not made dinner with me in mind; I had said Sunday I might hit Baker St. for dinner, but that was before I was up all night. So, I picked up a General Tso’s combo from Hunam Garden on the way home, had dinner at home… and went to bed.

Yes, I went to bed at 6:45 PM.

I woke up again at around 1:30 AM or so. I spent about forty-five minutes checking email and responding to messages, got a drink, and then went right back to sleep. I woke back up at my usual wake-up time of 5:15 AM.

I feel refreshed, relaxed, and NOW I’m ready to take on the work week… what little there is left of it. Hopefully I won’t have any rugs pulled out from under me. :-)

Well, that was a gigantic waste of my time.

D'Arque Bishop

Of the six database imports, only one finished. I have until 6 AM to complete the other five. I’ve already aborted two of them and restored from backups, as there was no way in hell they’d finish. The other three are very likely to meet the same fate.

Staying up all night was not something I wanted to do. I dozed slightly but I still feel very tired, and I still have to go to our Cypress location this morning. Bah.

Ah, well… I might as well go have some breakfast in a few and get ready for the day ahead.

This has not been a good weekend.

D'Arque Bishop

I hadn’t exactly planned on posting an actual post today, despite my saying I was going to in an earlier post. The fact of the matter, though, is that I’m writing this in order to keep myself awake. I’m currently babysitting several database imports for work, and I don’t dare go to sleep in case something goes horribly wrong. I wouldn’t care too much, normally, except that these are mission-critical databases for work and it’s absolutely imperative that these go right. The problem I’m worried about at this point is that I’m afraid four of these six databases won’t be finished by the time the work day starts tomorrow. I suppose I’ll cross that particular bridge when the time comes.

I suppose this wouldn’t be such a big deal if it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve been working all weekend. This database maintenance window was just one of two major projects I’d been working on. The other was the upgrade of software on all of our engineering workstations. We had planned on getting them all done Friday, but that estimate turned out to be rather optimistic. As it stood, I ended up working 14 hours on Friday and six and a half on Saturday to get the upgrades done. If it wasn’t for the fact that there’s at least one engineering workstation that needs to be done at our Cypress branch tomorrow, I’d ask if I could come in late.

About the only good thing that’s really happened this weekend (other than talking to Misty) was Merrie’s and Jonathan’s pre-Thanksgiving party. I actually ended up going straight there from work (with a quick stop at home to change shirts) yesterday, and spent most of the evening there. The highlight of the evening was when the Playstation 2 was brought out, and Merrie, Lara, and I sang a bunch of karaoke. :-) After a while, after most everyone had left, Merrie, Lara, and I sat around (and Lisa too, before she left) reminiscing about old days of high school, and what became of people since then. Another reason we sat around was because there was a massive storm overhead and driving out in it was not a fun idea…

Ah, well. If worst comes to worst I can always catnap a little or doze. As it stands, I have a well-deserved four day weekend coming up. I know George has asked if I wanted to do something with him and Chris Thursday, but I may very well beg off as by that point I’ll be so burned out from work that I’ll want nothing more than to spend a quiet day at home recovering. We’ll see what happens. Until then, though, I might just make a cup of coffee and see if that wakes me up a little…