Lyrics by Fours

Meme from Julia:

1. Put your mp3 player or music player on your computer on random.
2. Post the first four lines from the first 20 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song (skip repeat artists).
3. Post and let everyone you know guess (in the comments!) what song and artist the lines come from.
4. Please play fair. Don’t be a dirty rotten cheater and Google the lyrics!

1.
I am a man
Cut from the know
Rarely do friends
Come and then go

2.
I've been watching you from afar
for as long as I can remember
You're all a real man can need
and ever ask for

3.
I treat this like my thesis
Well written topic
Broken down into pieces
I introduce then produce

4.
Nothing left to say
And all I've left to do
Is run away from you
And she led me up, down

5.
Daddy's flown across the ocean
Leaving just a memory
Snapshot in the family album
Daddy what else did you leave for me?

6.
Siento pena,
pena porque te quise de veras
rabia porque te di
lo que nunca

7.
I saw her there from afar
Her hair grey charcoal
Takes a drag from her tar
I kissed her a smile

8.
There comes a time to be free of the heart
I wanna be ready, ready to start
On a love journey, got places to go
Made up my mind and I've got to let you know

9.
Move aside and let the man go through
Move aside and let the man go through
Move aside and let the man go through
Move aside and let the man go through

10.
Open the door and let your love come down
Over the wall, you're spinning 'round and 'round
'Cause you wanted some love
I'll make it happen

11.
Lovely is the feelin' now
Fever, temperatures risin' now
Power is the force, the vow
That makes it happen, it asks no questions why

12.
Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago,
'Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley far below

13.
New blood joins this earth
And quickly he's subdued
Through constant pained disgrace
The young boy learns their rules

14.
And the band played on
As the helicopters whirred
Drunk on the lawn in a nuclear dawn
My senses finally blurred

15.
Day after day
I will walk and I will play
But the day after today
I will stop and I will start

16.
Everything that happened here
Cannot happen when you're dead, she safely said
Worry when you wake tonight
Is it all in you head?

17.
You give me the reason
You give me control
I gave you my purity
My purity you stole

18.
Now I've been happy lately,
thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be,
something good has begun

19.
Hey where did we go,
Days when the rains came
Down in the hollow,
Playin' a new game

20.
Ah caught you smiling at me,
That's the way it should be,
Like a leaf is to a tree, so fine.
Ah all the good times we had

Answers some time next week...

First Day Of School

Today was Zoe's first day of kindergarten. Is it sad that I was really excited that she already has homework and that we started doing it as soon as she got home?

I Just Love Technology

I love to listen to NPR on my way to work. I have an hour long commute, which would be OK if I could listen to NPR the whole way. Unfortunately, about 15 minutes into the commute, I go over a Monument Hill and suddenly I get competing signals from the other NPR station in Denver which broadcasts at the same exact frequency as my local station. It turns out that both stations have signals strong enough so that I have interference all the way up to work. Argh!

I've been filling up my time with some Podcasts and/or books on tape...these have been filling in pretty well...but I really want to hear the news in the morning. I've been stuck with this dilemma for a couple months...that is, until now.

Last month I installed Ubuntu Linux on my computer. The nice thing with Linux is that it comes with a whole bunch of extra programs that help you do what you really want to do. Today on my way home from work I had completely run out of things to listen to on the road. So, instead, I spent the whole time in complete silence thinking of what I could do to fix my situation.

At first I thought up an idea to connect an FM radio to the input jack on my sound card and then have my computer automatically record Morning Edition from 5 to 6 in the morning. Then I thought, "wait, you moron, KRCC provides an audio stream, see if you can record that instead". I did a little research, installed a couple of utilities, and voila, I can now record Morning Edition every weekday morning and have it ready to go on my iPod when I'm ready to leave.

There will be no procrastinating the next time my station holds a fund drive. This extra service that they provide is not cheap and it is allowing me to listen to one of my favorite shows.

The weather's always changing

It's been really hot in Colorado Springs this past week. Just checked to see if it would be changing at all:



Oh boy! It's going to change by one degree on Thursday! I can't wait!

For your listening pleasure...

Black Stacey by Saul Williams. I just love this song...smart lyrics, great beat, makes you think. What else do you want?

Bye Bye Boing Boing

I had to do it. I had to remove Boing Boing off of my RSS feed list. Too many posts...too little time to read them...must remove from Google reader...

Tito's Visit

Last month my nephew visited us for 10 days. We had a great time with him and we're pretty sure he had fun as well...he's now talking about coming out to take a look at colleges in Colorado!

Finally, here are some pictures from his trip.

Is this the new Big Brother?

I'm not sure if I'm the only one thinking this, but is Google becoming the new Big Brother?

Why am I thinking this? Let's list off the "free" services Google provides:
Search Engine
Gmail
Google Maps
Google Earth
Google Documents
This Blog along with the rest of Blogger.com
Google Moon
Probably a lot more things that I don't know about, say...Google Laundry Service

One of the things that you'll notice when you sign up for Gmail is that it points to the Google Privacy Policy page in the terms of service. From what I understand, this page is the overarching Privacy Policy for most Google services. The statements that get my attention are the ones about the Log information and User communications. It basically says that they are storing a whole bunch of information about you including the e-mails you send. It just takes a slight shift in the culture at Google in order for these free services to change into more sinister data collection techniques.

The thing that really freaked me out was when I used Google Maps to put in an address and it came up with a high quality street view picture of the address I was searching. Holy crap! Someone from Google walked down that street and took a whole bunch of pictures...enough pictures so that you could go back and forth down the street and swivel the perspective. These guys are everywhere!

The one thing that is keeping me from completely jumping off the Google bandwagon is their sense of humor. At one point, if you zoomed in enough on Google Moon, it showed a whole bunch of swiss cheese. Unfortunately, they took that feature out. However, they still are offering jobs for working on the Google Moon Base, the Googlunaplex. Check them out here. While there are still people at Google which have this kind of sense of humor I'm OK with them keeping my information. However, once they get rid of that site, I'll know that the tide is turning and I'll have to cut all ties with Google. That will signal the change from the friendly big brother who keeps you out of trouble and will play catch with you to the mean big brother who will snitch on you for picking your nose.

Comments on Friending

I'm finally getting around to the posts that I promised myself I would write when I got more time...

Over a month ago, Ryan wrote a post about how he's been getting a lot of friend requests on Facebook and Myspace lately. One thing that he notes is that he's gotten a couple from people he didn't expect. I'll have to say that I was probably one of them. He's a couple of years older than me, we didn't really hang out in high school; in fact I completely forgot that he played bass (which is obviously a huge part of his life). The thing was, when I saw his name linked with some of my friends, I said "what the hell, from what I remember, he's a nice guy and he plays the bass to boot, I'll friend him". I ended up doing that with a couple more people and before I knew it, I had people that I never thought would be friending me sending me requests. It gives me a nice warm fuzzy to be known. =)

Now, I'm not kidding myself. Many of the "friends" aren't traditional friends by any sense. For a large percentage, it's just of way of saying "Hi, I know you. I'll look at your pictures and see what you've been up to. You can contact me if you want, but no big deal if you don't." However, it's not always like that and I enjoy the random e-mails that I get from people who do more than friend me and read my blog.

High school for me, like Ryan, was not my favorite 4 years. While I don't ever remember being shoved into a locker, I do remember various incidents of people throwing/pushing me. The more memorable ones are:
- Pushed into the pond at the Helmer Nature Center (actually happened before H.S. but I'm still counting it)
- Thrown, repeatedly, into a pool
- Thrown into the bushes
- Pushed into a garbage can

In full fairness, I have to admit that all of these incidents with the exception of the pond involved horsing around with my friends and I gave as good as I got. However, I still remember that you pushed me into the pond Katie Coakley and Monica Williams, and I will never forgive you...just you wait...bwaa ha ha ha! Oh crap, how lame is it that I actually admitted that two girls pushed me into a pond. I'm going to go hide in a locker now.

By the way, Ryan, I own a Samuel Shen carved bass as well. I don't get to play as often as I like, but I love the rich sound that it makes when I'm playing competently.

Geeking Out

Reason's why I'm particularly geeky at this very moment:
1. I'm writing on my blog on Saturday night
2. from the Ubuntu Linux OS on my computer
3. which I just installed today
4. and configured as a dual boot machine so that I can still play games on Windows
5. while wearing my glasses with only one temple
6. and having to look up "glasses" in Wikipedia to find out that the things that go from the front of the frame and hang over your ear are called "temples"
7. and writing an extremely long run-on sentence but writing it off as OK since the sentence is in list format
8. and thinking it's a good idea to link to Weird Al Yankovic's White and Nerdy YouTube video is good way to pay homage to this geeky post.

OK, I'm going to go have a beer now and see if that makes me any cooler.