Struggle

Today has been a tough day. Nothing bad happening, just lots of stuff at work happening simultaneously that is stressing me out. The stress increase is unnecessary and pretty irrational, but it’s real none the less.

We have been asked to setup a new development environment that has an extension with our new ai software. I’ll save my ai rant for another post (and you bet your sweet skynet fearing ass that many such posts are coming) but suffice to say I have been having a ton of trouble getting the new environment up and running. Most of my team got things running without issue but a few people have been hitting major trouble. I don’t know if my troubles count as “major” but I had to uninstall everything today and start from scratch and it finally worked. Finally. I feel a huge relief.

Today is Monday and I haven’t posted anything since Thursday. That’s crazy. I never go that long without boring the internet to tears with at least one pointless post. What’s wrong with me?

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me… I’m currently not in a band. I’m starting to get to the point where its not a matter of wanting to be in a band, it’s a matter of needing to be in a band. Maybe even multiple bands. A cover band, an original rock band, a bluesy jam band… all of the above?

I’m also starting to reach the point where my desire to start going outside and taking pictures of everything is getting out of control. By extension, my desire to try new 35mm film cameras is also getting out of control. I’m having to force myself not to open up ebay when I am sitting in front of a computer. A Nikon F5 (or F6, or F4, or F2) would really hit the spot right now. Also 100 new lenses would really make life better during these dark days of fascist dictatorship.

Speaking of our fascist dictatorship, I consider myself a pretty militant atheist but I grew up catholic. Can I just say that on this day in history I would really like to give the pope a high five?

What else, what else… the Red Sox are no longer the worst team in the big leagues. When I looked at the standings yesterday there were a whole two teams with lower winning percentages. Nice. On top of that, the Bruins clinched a play off spot. Bring me that post season, where they will likely get bounced in the first round.

Okay…. that’s it for this post. Back to work, you.

War Crimes

The fascist president of the fascist states of america yesterday announced that he was going to kill everyone in Iran. He didn’t because of a cease fire that capitulated to all of Iran’s wishes. Good job, fascist president of the fascist states of america. You started the war and you surrendered. Way to make america great again.

Surrendering isn’t the point of this post. The war crime is. Threatening to kill civilians is a war crime. The fact that he did not follow through on his threat does not make it any less a war crime.

He needs to be in jail. Now. Yesterday. He needs to be removed from office, obviously, whether that’s impeachment or the 25th amendment, I don’t care. It needs to happen. My point is, he needs to watch the proceedings from a jail cell. He can have some toady fascist lawyer watch with him, but he needs to be in prison now. Preferably a military prison. Even better, a prison in Nuremberg.

This needs to happen right now. Not tomorrow, not some random day in some theoretical future. Now. Right fucking now.

Spring, My Ass

I was running a little late this morning. I wanted to work in the office and I had a meeting on my schedule at 9:00am. I had to be certain I could get to my desk before that meeting started. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get in on time. As I was packing up my shit to leave the house I told my wife that I would plug my work address into the GPS and if it gave an estimated arrival time of after 8:50am I would work from home. Note: this conversation happened at 7:15am.

I got into the car, opened up the Waze app and pointed it at work. The ETA was 8:41am. Okay, I should be all right. That was when I saw the snow flake.

WTF? It’s April 7th… snow? By the time I got to the end of my street there was a light flurry. By the time I was about 10 miles down route 93 South it was full on snowing. By the time I got down to the route 4 exit off of route 128 South the snow was sticking and it was snowing heavily.

Up yours, mother nature. Up yours.

I parked my car at 8:56am and practically ran up to my desk on the fourth floor. I was in the meeting one minute late at 9:01am.

It is April 7, 2026 and it is still fucking winter in New England. Bite me.

Blackout

The Artemis II mission is currently circling the moon and is out of line of site communication with NASA on Earth. That great big empty rock in the sky is blocking the way.

They are less than half an hour away from their closest approach to the Moon. Earlier this afternoon they broke Apollo 13’s record for flying the farthest distance from Earth. At this very moment they are looking at the dark side of the moon from a point of view that no human being has ever seen.

To say that today is a great day for humanity is an understatement.

Meanwhile, the orange piece of shit clown gave a press conference where he said he was going to destroy Iran completely. He didn’t use the words “nuclear weapons” but the implication was as clear as a mentally defective nazi can get.

How can america simultaneously have its finest moment and its worse moment?

Big Weekend

This has been quite the big weekend and it has very little to do with a zombie who gave up his weekend for our sins. But I digress.

Today, April 5th, is the 19th anniversary of my first date with my wife. Clearly she wasn’t my wife at the time, but it was a pretty good first date. Very successul. We celebrated by going to a matinee. We saw Projet Hail Mary again. It was my second viewing and her third. Great movie. If it is playing on an IMAX screen anywhere near us next weekend we might go see it one more time.

After the movie, Jen made a fancy easter/first-dateiversary dinner and it was wonderful. We ate at the dining room table like civilized people instead of slumming it in the living room in front of the TV like usual. It was a very nice moment.

Yesterday we had my in-laws over for a pre-easter easter dinner. Jen made lasagna. I don’t like lasagna so she made me some pasta on the side. She’s the best.

After dinner I hopped in the car and headed to Boston to see a show. Throwing Muses. It was a fantastic show. I was feeling kinda negative at first. I was feeling like I’m too old to go to shows in bars. Two songs into the Muses set though my whole universe changed. By that time I was actively trying to think of a world where I could see Throwing Muses live every day for the rest of my life. It was magic.

There was one negative though. Halfway through their set I got a nose bleed of all things. Not just any nose bleed, but a massive, gushing nose bleed. It was everywhere. I looked like I was living through a horror movie. Gore.

To summarize, it’s been a very good weekend. I’ve been nuts about my wife for 19 years now and I just keep getting nuttier and nuttier as time goes by.

Now, a few pics from the show last night.

Easter Weekend?

Easter is meaningless for me now. There was that one year when I was a kid when the Easter Bunny included two Star Wars action figures in my Easter Basket. Damn if that wasn’t like getting a second xmas that year. What does it mean though? It means that when I was a kid my family was catholic but today I am nothing. When it comes to religion, I don’t. None. That’s all. I didn’t even realize this weekend was Easter until about a week ago when my step daughter mentioned she was going to her Aunt’s house for Easter dinner. My response was more or less, “what?”

My in-laws are coming over tomorrow for Easter dinner one day early. We have tickets to see Throwing Muses at the Paradise in Boston tomorrow night as well, but my wife may not be able to go. We’ll see.

Was there a point to this post? I don’t think so. I had a super stressful moment this morning at work. No spoilers, but I had to request a staff member’s emergency contact. I didn’t end up needing it as the issue resolved itself before I got a response to the request, but it was close. I hope to never have to do that again.

In other news, it’s opening day at Fenway Park today. I had meetings scheduled all afternoon and thought I wouldn’t be able to listen to the game, but most of them have been postponed so I’ll be able to tune in to some of the game. That’s a nice little bonus. Granted the Red Sox are 1–5 on the young season. They won their opening game and have lost every game since. Here’s hoping some home cookin’ will straighten this mess out before it gets too awful.

I really thought I had a point to this post but I’ve lost it and forgotten it and now I’ll just leave you with a cat.

DSC_5749

Where is Artemis II Now?

The Artemis II mission is well underway. The Orion Capsule with its crew of four humans (unlike Artemis I which was crewed by four manikins) launched atop NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) last night and boy do I hope I have all of these terms correct. Oh well.

Did I see the launch? No. I live near Boston which means while the rocket was blasting its way toward the stars down in Florida I was stuck in stupidly awful traffic on route 128. You know, like you do.

Despite my traffic woes, Artemis II launched and made it into orbit. That leaves me with a new question. Where are they now? Turns out NASA kind of has an answer, thought the reality of it was a little underwhelming.

NASA’s Artemis Real-time Orbit Website (AROW) let’s you track where the capsule and its four astronauts are at any given moment. Can you imagine how much internet traffic a page like that would have had back in July of 1969 when Apollo 11 was making its trip to the moon? Or at least how much internet traffic it would have seen if internet traffic actually existed. You know what I mean though. You’re pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down, right?

I’m somewhat underwhelmed by the site. At least so far. I don’t know if its the site itself or if its just getting slammed with visitors or what, but it is unbelievably slow for me right now and it took a really long time before I could do anything at all. Once it loaded though, it gave me some cool stats. Right now they are 35,553 miles from Earth, 235,997 miles from the Moon, and they are traveling at a brisk 3,841 miles per hour. May the rest of the world pardon my use of English units. We’re ass backwards Americans in these parts after all.

Check out the site and have fun keeping an eye on things as they travel to the moon, do a lap, and then come home safely. Space exploration is super freakin’ fun, even when the mission is just a test drive. Enjoy!

Launch Day

I’m sitting at my desk at work and the lights just went out. It wasn’t a power failure, it was just that none of us moved enough to trip the motion sensors that turn on the lights.

Sigh.

Hey, we’re going to the moon! The Artemis II mission is about an hour away from its launch window. I’ve been putzing around social media for the last 25 minutes or so and I think I just saw that the crew was loaded into the Orion Capsule. Assuming we don’t abort, they won’t leave the capsule for 10 days or so. They will fly into Earth orbit, circle the globe a couple of times, then head off to the moon. They aren’t landing (that will be Artemis III), they are just circling around once and then heading back.

This is just a test mission. It’s basically the same mission as Artemis I. The main difference is episode I had manikins for crew while episode II has humans. Four of them. Three Americans and a Canadian.

The launch window opens at 6:24pm Eastern time. It is currently 5:32pm Eastern time. The weather forecast is mostly sunny and warm. Things are looking good right now, but there is still plenty of time for issues to pop up.

Fingers crossed they launch tonight, circle the moon, and come home safely.

Was That Greeny?

I posted the video of Rush playing at the Juno Awards Ceremony the other night. Being the guitar nerd that I am, while 99% of me was consumed with bliss over seeing Rush again, 1% of me was noticing that Alex Lifeson was playing a Les Paul that I don’t think I’ve ever seen him with before.

It looked like a vintage burst. Something made between 1958 and 1960. It was faded from sunburst to yellow the way a lot of ‘58’s and ‘59’s are. I assumed it was the real deal, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen Alex play a real burst before. I know Geddy Lee owns (owned?) one, but Alex usually plays newer models. Even back in the 70’s, before vintage Les Pauls became too enormously expensive, he played 70’s models.

So as I was watching the video I was wondering whether the guitar was a reissue or the real thing. There was something about it though… something familiar…

Holy shit, was he playing Greeny? Possibly the most famous of all Les Pauls? Arguably the finest example of the finest electric guitars ever made? Was he playing Peter Green’s Les Paul? The one Peter Green played in Fleetwood Mac and sold to Gary Moore for whatever Gary happend to have in his wallet at the time? The one that Moore sold to pay medical bills (at least that’s what I heard) and then years later a collector sold to Kirk Hammett of Metallica? The one with the out of phase neck pick up that inspired guitarists world ‘round to install their neck pick ups upside down to try to replicate?

Gary Moore, Peter Green, Kirk Hammett, all playing Greeny

So was Alex Lifeson playing Greeny?

I can’t find a good picture of the spots near the bridge pick up where the paint is warn away, but you can see it in some of the low res pics I’ve seen and in the video. The worn spots are there. You can see in these pics that it has the mismatched knobs and the neck pickup is upside down. The visual things are there.

The question then is, is this the real guitar or is it a replica? If it is a replica the question then is, is it the $50,000 replica that Gibson released in a very limited run a few years ago, or is it the $20,000 version that they released in a slightly less limited run, or is it the mass produced Gibson USA version that sold for… I can’t remember… was it $6,000? $8,000? Something like that.

There are stories out there reporting Alex and Kirk Hammett hanging out together. I know Kirk is a fan of Alex and Rush and I think I’ve read that Alex is a fan of Kirk and Metallica (I know I’ve read about Geddy Lee being a Metallica fan).

I hope it’s the real thing. My guitar nerd brain also hopes that Hammett sells it to Lifeson and he takes it on the road with him and I get to see him play it when we see Rush in New York in July. That would be awesome. If I had to guess though… it’s probably a reissue.

I hope it’s the real thing though. That would be so cool.