ruminations on hotel cafe
July 14, 2003 by Eric Richardson
I did make it out to Hotel Cafe on Saturday and got my weekly fill (or at least it's been weekyl recently) of live music. The Hotel's definitely the place to be these days, the last few times I've been there it's been pretty packed. Crowds seem to be biggest earlier rather than later. Part of this has meant that the atmosphere is changing a bit. I used to be amazed at how quiet people were while there was an act on. Now that's not quite as much the case. When Gus Black started his set on the 3rd you could see him trying to drag out his intro, hoping that the people around the bar would quiet down a little. Partly this just comes with the territory. If you're going to play small coffee house type shows, you have to get used to people having conversations. But on the other hand people need to show a little respect. If you want to be loud, go somewhere else. The Hotel's for the music.
But that's all prelude. This Saturday I went pretty late and only caught Saucy Monky and the band in front of them, and I've already rambled, so I'll just jump straight to Saucy. I know I've said this before, but they're just a fun band. They're loving being on stage, and it shows. At some point between the show and today I was thinking about how I like the fact that they don't have a lead vocalist, pre se, they've got two of them. It's sort of a tag-team, as one or the other leads through a song. But it's not a real tag-team, it's more of a WWF tag-team, where before tagging out the two team up while the ref's not looking.
Shows I'm Planning to See
July 12, 2003 by Eric Richardson
I meant to post this earlier, but I get lazy and forget things. Anyway... TONIGHT, Saucy Monky is playing a midnight show at Hotel Cafe. Cool music and a really friendly band. July 23, Old Sol is playing a show at Fais Do Do. I've never been there, but the pictures on the website look cool. July 31, Peak Show is playing a show at the knit with Woven. I've never seen either of them, but KCRW's been playing both of them and I think they sound cool. August 15, the retooled lineup of the Red Elvises is back where it all began, Rusty's Surf Ranch. I can't describe Red Elvises. They just are, and they're fun.
weird phone calls
July 10, 2003 by Eric Richardson
When I got DSL, I had to get a new phone line from SBC. We had an apartment line, but it was through Comcast, and couldn't be used. So I got just local, no long-distance, no frills, etc. Pretty much imediately the line started getting calls, mostly wrong numbers. That's not too surprising. I only really use my cell phone to recieve calls, so I've actually turned off the ringer on the line. Still, no big deal. What confuses me, though, is the answering machine messages I get. I swear 80% of them think they're talking to a real person. My message isn't deceptive, so I attribute some of them to callers who can't speak English. The rest must be telemarketers whose computers get confused and think it's a live person. In any case, it's very entertaining to come home and check the machine to find 6 messages which all start off with "hello? hello?"
ergo is more than a buzzword
July 07, 2003 by Eric Richardson
For a long time now I've noticed that I was having a hard time sitting up straight at my computer for periods of time. This presented issues, since computer usage is my livelihood. Today I finally decided that the issue was monitor height, and decided to do something about it. Not exactly one to have proper tools for the job, my monitor raising consists of sitting the monitors on a shelf that's heightened off the desk by two stacks of books. What's currently on my monitor-raising best sellers list? On the left, from top to bottom: In Search of Schrodinger's Cat, by John Gribbin; 20th Century Ethical Theory, by Cahn and Haber; and Code Complete, by Steve McConnell. On the right side, The Lanahan Readings in the American Polity, by Serow Ladd; Chaos, by James Gleick; In Search of Africa, by Diawara; and White's Contemporary Moral Problems. My monitors will be enlightened.
very spammy spam
July 02, 2003 by Eric Richardson
I saw where Cam wrote about his highest scoring spam, and it got me curious, so I wrote a script to run through my caughtspam folder. My top scorer was only 54.9. You can see it here. The spamassassin warnings stretch forever. I'm also starting to log my spam scores to Project SpamSearch. You can see my stats here when stuff starts getting reported.