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Category: General Posts (Page 6 of 21)

SAP BO ASUG Fun

October 4, 2010 /

I’m in Orlando for the SAP Business Objects ASUG conference at Disney’s Dolphin and Swan hotel, just outside Epcot.

The conference runs tomorrow through mid-day Thursday; Edith and the kids are flying down tomorrow evening, and we’ll all be here visiting D-World until late Sunday when we fly back to Newark.  Friday is our day at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!  Will and I are very excited – I only hope Hogwarts and Hogsmeade live up to the printed page.  I’ve heard the lines are OUTRAGEOUSLY long, so we’re planning on getting an early start to beat the crowds – we’ll see how that goes.

Hooters

October 3, 2010 /

Received a text from Roger this afternoon: looks like the boys will be back in Philly for a Thanksgiving show on Friday, November 26th at the Electric Factory. Roger and I are in – just need to convince Tommy too!

The Promise

September 29, 2010 /

I was playing with iTunes yesterday, particularly with the new Ping feature which incorporates Twitter-like social networking directly into the application.  I noticed when playing a particular song, the iTunes Ping sidebar indicated that a certain someone named Bruce Springsteen also likes that particular artist.  “Cool,” I thought, “let me click on this guy and see what else he’s about” and as it turns out it really is The Boss himself (or at least someone in his employ) posting “pings” on iTunes.  His ping from September 10th indicates that there is a new release coming out on November 16th:  The Promise: The Darkness On The Edge Of Town Story which includes a 90 minute documentary The Promise: The Making of Darkness On The Edge Of Town and an additional 21 previously unreleased songs from the Darkness sessions.

Extra cool!  The complete package is pricey – $125 – but it is as good as purchased already.  It was on September 19, 1978 (yes, twenty years later the date would serve as Edith and my wedding day) that I recorded Bruce’s live radio concert from the Capital Theater in Passaic, NJ, while on the Darkness tour.  The show stands out as a masterpiece (or, as it was later titled on the bootleg release, a Piece de Resistance.)  I remember bouncing off my bedroom walls listening to the show, which included unreleased songs (Independence Day, Fire, Because the Night, and an alternate version of Point Blank) as well as the ultimate absolutely flat out hardest rocking guitar screaming best live recording you will ever hear of Prove It All Night, plus gems such as Not Fade Away seguing into She’s The One, and shades of Drive All Night hidden inside of Backstreets.  With the release of The Promise also comes a live recording from Houston from the Darkness tour, and the set list looks like a real challenger to the Passaic show:

  1. Badlands
  2. Streets Of Fire
  3. It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City
  4. Darkness On The Edge Of Town
  5. Spirit In The Night
  6. Independence Day
  7. The Promised Land
  8. Prove It All Night
  9. Racing In The Street
  10. Thunder Road
  11. Jungleland
  12. The Ties That Bind
  13. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
  14. The Fever
  15. Fire
  16. Candy’s Room
  17. Because The Night
  18. Point Blank
  19. She’s The One
  20. Backstreets
  21. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
  22. Born To Run
  23. Detroit Medley
  24. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
  25. You Can’t Sit Down
  26. Quarter To Three

Anyway, if you can’t tell, I’m excited about this release!

Global Warming

September 1, 2010 /

Talk about thawing polar ice caps, rising sea levels, calving ice shelves… almost unbelievably, after many years, it seems the division between Susan and I has melted under the hot, dry sun that is the Summer of 2010.  Barely seven months ago, there was absolutely no indication that this turn of events was even remotely possible, but surely as I sit here now, I tell you… Susan and I are reconciled and we are friends, again.  Big deal?  Yes, it is… a very big deal.

We’ve exchanged some emails over the past several weeks, and filled in some of the gaps from over the past 25 years, including what it was that caused our friendship to suffer and fall apart; a lot of questions have finally been answered, and we’ve gained new perspective.  We’ve cleared the air, apologized for past hurts, and we’re ready now to move on and see where this renewed friendship will lead.

From The Writer’s Almanac

August 13, 2010 /

A post for Kate, my little left-hander:

Today is International Left-hander’s Day, a day in which left-hander advocacy groups remind you that left-handed scissors, school desks, and computer mice are nonexistent in many places and hard to come by in others. The holiday was first celebrated on this day in 1976, started by Left-hander’s International, with the guiding mantra, “Lefties have rights.”

The group also puts out bulletins with information like this: “Did You Know? Right-handed people operate in the left side of the brain. Left-handed people use their right side. Therefore, only left-handed people are in their right mind.”

Between 10 and 15 percent of the world’s population is left-handed. While we don’t really know why a fraction of the world is left-handed, we do know that it is genetic. Scientists have recently discovered what they think is the gene that allows a parent the possibility of procreating a left-handed child.

got zucchini?

August 10, 2010 /

We sure do… and cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes.  Picked nearly three dozen cucumbers this week (the batch in the pictures just yesterday morning alone) and just when I think they are winding down the zucchini continue to produce more and more fruit.  The peppers and tomatoes are finally turning red, and the Japanese eggplant are starting to come into their own.  The lettuce has finally bolted and been removed to make room for a second planting of beans, and despite the garden fencing, the groundhogs took care of most of the broccoli, but there is still hope for cauliflower.  The carrots have yet to be picked, so we’ll see what we get when they are ready.  Edith has been busy shredding, pickling, canning, cooking, baking, slicing, dicing and more, and has hardly begun to start on the tomatoes!

FatCat

August 7, 2010 /

Behold, the remains of my college towel from 1980.  It had been printed with a B. Kliban drawing of a cat wearing a suit, but now 30 years later all that is left are cut up pieces, now slopped in sudsy buckets of water by my kids to clean outdoor patio furniture.  I remember being teased by one of my fellow dorm mates about how most of the women in his family had Cat towels, asserting that my towel was not very masculine, but I did not care.  In all honesty, by the time the towel was cut into rags it had seen much better days, but I happened to see Will using it a few weekends ago in the back yard, and it made me realize just how long that towel has been around!

I’m a Man O’Lantern

August 6, 2010 /

Had a stress test this morning – nothing abnormal, heart is functioning pretty much exactly as it should.  However, to ensure good skin contact for the TTE and stress echocardiogram, selected areas of chest hair needed to be shaved, resulting in an interesting pattern on my chest.

Our Time In Eden

August 3, 2010 /

With nearly 10,000 songs on my iPod, still at only 50% capacity, you might expect that my selection of tunes is fairly diverse, and you would be correct.  However, when it comes to the songs to which I typically choose to listen, the selection narrows quite a bit.  There are certain songs/albums/artists that I have no problem listening to repeatedly, and at the moment those songs are found on the 10,000 Maniacs album Our Time In Eden.  I haven’t spent any time trying to figure out why that is:  it could be Robert Buck’s jangly guitar, or Natalie Merchant’s delicate yet strong vocals, Jerome Augustyniak’s pronounced snare and hi-hat, or the JB Horns, or the profound lyrics, or maybe it is all of those things and more.  I like the design and coloration of the album cover.  It’s hard to believe that the album was released 18 years ago, that I bought the CD so long ago, at a very different point in my life from where I am today.

We are the roses in the garden, beauty with thorns among our leaves.  To pick a rose you ask your hands to bleed.  What is the reason for having roses when your blood is shed carelessly?  It must be for something more than vanity.

Believe me, the truth is we`re not honest, not the people that we dream.  We`re not as close as we could be.  Willing to grow but rains are shallow.  Barren and wind-scattered seed on stone and dry land, we will be.  Waiting for the light arisen to flood inside the prison.  And in that time kind words alone will teach us, no bitterness will reach us.  Reason will be guided another way.

All in time, but the clock is another demon that devours our time in Eden, in our Paradise.  Will our eyes see well beneath us, flowers all divine?  Is there still time?  If we wake and discover in life a precious love, will that waking become more heavenly?

I did get the chance to see 10,000 Maniacs perform on a hot summer evening at the Tower Theatre in 1989, with some of my very best friends; the show was good, and the evening was memorable.  Natalie left the Maniacs after Our Time In Eden, and recently released Leave Your Sleep, which along with Motherland is the only solo album of Natalie’s that I own. 

I’m not sure where I’m going with this – it seemed to make sense as a perfectly good post topic earlier tonight.  I guess I could have simply written “I like Our Time in Eden” but that doesn’t seem to be quite adequate.

The Trade Deadline

July 29, 2010 /

The Phillies obtained Roy Oswalt from the Houston Astros this afternoon, to help them down the stretch as they battle to make the MLB post-seasson.

I don’t think it quite makes up for trading away Cliff Lee, but I like having two premiere pitchers in Oswalt and Roy Halladay at the top of the rotation, as the Phils try and climb back into 1st place in the NL East.

The NFR Challenge

July 27, 2010 /

We watched Julie & Julia the other night.  It was OK – Meryl Streep is spot on as Julia Child, and Julia’s life in Paris and the realization of her passion for preparing French cuisine is the much more interesting half of the story, as I really had no empathy for Julie Powell’s story or her stunt to cook her way through the entire Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Anyway, early last week I was channel surfing and found a program American Revolutionaries featuring directors on Ovation; it was profiling John Cassavetes, and some of the promo spots spotlighted Francis Ford Coppola‘s The Conversation, among others.  It made me think about some really good directors and movies, and made me want to watch some of the great films I’ve never seen, as well as re-watch some of the films I’d seen years ago.  I reserved American Graffiti and The Conversation from the local library, and watched them on Sunday and Monday nights, respectively.  Today, I was browsing the IMDB site during lunch, and it occurred to me to check out the National Film Registry catalog, and it then further occurred to me to maybe conduct my own Julie & Julia challenge to watch every film currently registered in the NFR.  I have no timeline set to accomplish this task, and don’t really know that it is doable, but it is interesting to think about giving it a try.

You can find the complete list of NFR films here.

The New Hampshire Dream Vacation

July 27, 2010 /

Sometimes, life is not fair.

The New Hampshire Division of Travel and Tourism Development is sponsoring a photo contest, which is almost too good to be true: just submit a photo between May 24 and September 6, 2010, taken in New Hampshire, of one or more persons along with a contest sign reading “I love it here!” to be eligible to win a $2500 Grand Prize New Hampshire vacation package.  The problem is, we have no plans or opportunity to visit the Granite State between now and September 6th.

My heart is heavy with disappointment.  Edith and I simply love our trips to New Hampshire, whether is is skiing in the winter, visiting Storyland in the summer, or hanging out in North Conway in the fall, we’ve spent a lot of time up there, and would relocate there if an opportunity would present itself.  I’m not even so much disappointed about not being able to win the vacation; I just want to go visit there and take our pictures with the “I love it here!” sign.

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