Entries this day: beastie_boys new_computer

beastie boys

30 January 1999

Manda called me after she finished working out at the gym on her side of town at like 8:33pm today. "Do you think there's any way I can get to the museum by 9 o'clock? They're playing Beastie Boys laser light show."

Oooh. I didn't really think so, but we love the B-Boys. "Um, try it and I'll meet you at the ticket counter."

Actually, at my request Manda called me back some minutes later when she reached Fondren on Hwy 59. That was my indicator that she was the same distance (time-wise) away as me. So I grabbed my cell phone and camera and hopped into my car.

The first foreshadowing of the night was that I got nearly all green lights all the way. And they're not synchronized to optimize traffic flow. They just all turned green for me. Except for 1, well actually 2, but out of 8, that's pretty durn good.

There was 1 (one) parking spot open for me to park. Just as I pulled in, Manda called my cell phone.

"Where are you?" we both asked. Turns out she was only like 50 seconds behind me. I was all, "there's really no place to park.... oh wait, except that these people are about to leave..." and a couple was just walking up to their car and could hear me trying to coordinate an open parking spot. Manda was just pulling up as they were getting into their car. The girl goes, "is that her?" to make sure Manda would get their spot. I was all, "yes, thank you so much!"

Manda pulled in and we brisked over to the museum. Up the steps, through the large entryway, and to the ticket counter. I pulled my wallet out as I smiled at the girl behind the counter, "is there any way we can get Beastie Boys tickets?"

"No, sorry.."

And I was all, "oh man, are you sure?" and trying to flirt some tickets out of her or something and then Amanda was like tugging my chain wallet and I found myself walking backwards. "Where are we going?"

"Come on" she insisted.

I turned around and though I hadn't noticed, a guy who worked there had said, "I'll get you in," and led Manda and I toward the planetarium door. Whoah!

Whoah is right! He told the door guy, "these guys are with me" and we walked right in! No tickets; nothin'!!!!

B-BOYS BABY!!! and we didn't even have to pay or wait in line or anything!!! He scoped out some seats and led us to them.

Manda asked his name (Kendrick) and we shook his hand and thanked him a bunch.

The seats we got were kinda off to one side and they weren't reclining seats, but man they were free and I loved it!

We actually had a significant amount of wait time in the planetarium before they started - like 4 minutes while the announcer guy said some stuff to kick off the show "don't put your feet on the seats in front of you cause you'll kick someone in the head and they'll have to beat you up" and "as you watch the show, you may experience some queasiness, and if that's what you came for, then great, but if you need to leave, please exit through the front doors, but remember you won't be able to come back in; you'll just have to listen through the doors."

The show was not astonishing-oh-my-goodness-absolutely-incredible, but for the price, it was pretty great. They played about 12 songs, spanning all the albums, but only "Intergalactic Planetary" from hello nasty. They didn't play "Paul Revere," which I sorely missed, nor "Egg Man" which woulda been great.

"Brass Monkey" "Sabotage" "Whatcha Want?" "Fight for Your Right" "Flute Loop" "Girls" "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" are all songs they played that Manda and I could think of just by memory.

Here are the rest of the songs we recognize that they played after going through all the albums:

From Ill Communication "Sure Shot" "Flutterman's Rule"

From Check Your Head "Gratitude" "Something's Got to Give" "The Blue Nun" "Stand Together"

From Paul's Boutique "Shake Your Rump" "Hey Ladies" "5-Piece Chicken Dinner" "Shadrach" but they did not play the cool sample after Shadrach, so I'll include it here: "for the best in mens' clothing call Paul's Boutique; ask for Janice; their number is 718-498-1043. That's Paul's Boutique and they're in Brooklyn."

The show was great, and included 2 encores. Oh and I took a ton of pictures (with no flash) during the show. I don't know how many, but probably 15 or 20. When we left, we looked for Kendrick to thank him, but never found him.

On the way home I had to stop for 5 traffic lights. (Manda got lost in downtown for about 10 minutes...) permalink

new computer

30 January 1999

A few days ago, my machine locked up and then wouldn't reboot. It would try to boot, but where the boot manager would normally prompt with

LILO:

so I could type in whether I wanted to boot linux or Windows, now it just said

LI

and wouldn't do nothin.

Hmmm.. I was able to boot with a floppy, and even (thankfully) read all the info on this otherwise unbootable hard drive. I had 2 other drives, so copied all the info I wanted to save onto one drive and took it out of the mix.

I tried every combination I could think of, used FDisk and Partition Magic and formatted and installed boot managers and everything, but I couldn't get it to go.

So I bought a new machine.

Actually I put it on credit card (ack). $900 but it is a sweet sweet system:

• PII 350Mhz CPU
• 100Mhz ATX mainboard
• 64Megs ram
• 8Gig ide HD
• 32x CD
• Voodoo Banshee video card with 16megs on it
• 3.5 inch floppy
• 56k internal modem
• Soundblaster card

All of the above components came separately, and my friend Thomas helped me put it all together. I used my current monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers and all is good.

Okay, actually all is pretty good; last night the video card was killer awesome, but today a driver is screwed up or something and I've only got 640x480 pixels and the fonts are this big!! I'll call Thomas and see if he can help me out with that.

Yay new machine!

So I'm catching up on email and stuff now. permalink