November 2009 Archives

So I was working on the Three Tenor's Christmas album, when for whatever reason, the whole rip process started taking far longer than the previous, oh, twenty CDs.

You have to know when to stop the rip and eject the CD.

I put a different Christmas one in (because that's the stack I'm working on, you see). This one started copying right away.

Which was a good thing.

Then I noticed back to back two titles. (It's a mix of people singing a variety of songs. From Boyz II Men to Eartha Kitt.) Anyway, there of course is White Christmas (Bing Crosby naturally), and right after that Blue Christmas (Elvis naturally).

Naturally the post title wrote itself. Rest is just filler to go with it.

From my snuggled-in-ness on the sofa, I'm wondering what I can do to contribute to the economy on this day I'm supposed to (were I to believe the media) be shopping.

I tend to Christmas shop on Christmas Eve. Takes a lot of the pressure off.

As for me, not a single thing I really need. I pondered the fact that I might need a storage card for my MP3 player.

Until I decided to put my entire music collection into portable format. So I decided to wait and see how much storage I'm actually going to need.

And then let that inform whatever purchase I make.

So I'm in the process of ripping music.

Getting all kinds of distracted. I'm currently on CD one of Simon and Garfunkel's Old Friends. I'm listening to Baby Driver and it's hard not to be distracted. "My daddy was a prominent frogman; my momma's in the Naval reserve..."

And My Little Town. Plus there are two more CDs in this set And many waiting their turn after that.

Not too far down the stack is the Christmas music. Not that I needed a reason to build a fire, but that's likely going to be the kicker. With some more hot tea.

Goes down easy.

Like I told Mom this morning, at least I'm not in the ER.

As always, there is much to be thankful for.

If geek is the color for fall and fall lasts until December 21, then it could be a long fall.

Nevertheless.

Urbandictionary kindly gave me a new acronym this morning. Highly efficient. Norinoro. No option ruled in, no option ruled out. Fun to say.

Personally, not-at-all-coincidentally, at that precise moment I needed the anti-that.

There were none listed.

Let alone any listed with the specific qualifier I needed.

Because norinoro is undecided, you see.

I needed the words that came after that. The unambiguous ones.

I amused myself with four letters for a while.

Pondered much.

Concluded that if you just split the word in half, they go different directions in a completely unambiguous manner. All on their own.

Nori for me.

It looked wrong in black and white, so being the dork that I am, I looked it up.

Affect can be used as a verb when talking about influence.

(I could see it either way. Decided not to correct it.)

Geek is definitely the color for fall. I was reading Facebook posts the other day and noticed my cousin, in a reference to Dante's circles of hell, had misspelled Dante's last name.

In and of itself, a circle of hell for my inner dork.
Endowed at birth with an editor's eye.
And issues with the alphabet.
And all that implies.

Yesterday it came in handy as I had an incessant need to push buttons on pondring's control panel.

I first had to get past the decision point of whether to switch to WordPress or leave Movable Type alone. I chose door number two.

Then went into another of pondring's appendages (I left Dave alone) and pushed buttons.

Dork. Looking for typos in tags, divisions, class ids, containers.

Embracing it. Pondring got some breathing room. And quite a bit of the ugly taken off the right-hand column.

I of course learned things in the process.

Just as soon as I can figure out what type of container has to hold the badges, I'll have that part of it fixed too.

I started to pick a category for this, then realized it doesn't really matter what category this is. I took the categories off for a bit. Most pointed to the older posts - which despite signs and links many of you never found anyway. Lately the categories have all melted into one. Hence, I figured overall they were extraneous.

Once I moved the Recent stuff up to the top, the calendar also became superfluous. So it's too gone.

I spaced out the search cause it seemed cramped once I expanded the overall size of pondring's container by about 200 pixels. Breathing room, so to speak.

Of course I had to have three different versions of pondring open at one time to see what affect one change was going to have on the other. Plus it kept backups for when I screwed up.

Which I did a few times. Here a pixel, there a pixel, and if you get it in the wrong container, everything goes to hell.

I still have an upper right-hand corner to fill in. And some reconfiguration to do of the posts.

Soon come.

There will be button pushing in pondring's very near future, as I adapt the right-hand column to the style of me.

The content is fine, but overall it's just too incongruent. Distracting. In an unpleasant way.

"You sent Dave Matthews a tweet. With a link to a 41 page post. And in tiny print up at the top you mention you are going to be in Vegas and ask to meet him and hang out with him after the show. And say please and thank you in Afrikaans."

"That's just the way the words came out."

"And you think that's going to work."

"You can't get what you don't ask for."

"He's probably thinking stalker."

"It's Vegas, baby. I'm going to risk it. Dice are already in the air."

That odd thing in the picture on my left shoulder would be a purse. (Yes. I do own one. As a matter of fact I own two.)

As for the jacket, that's just what happens when I dress out of the side of my closet where the clothes are on hangers, as opposed to wearing what is in the the baskets on the shelves.

Baskets contain clothing that should not be worn in public, let alone to a concert where the singers wear suits and ties, and in a place with "Opera House" in its name.

Many years ago, a friend called me and said she was coming in to town to see the King's Singers and did I want to go.

So we went. And I had the same reaction that I have seen on the faces of people I now take to see the King's Singers.

Motionless. Entranced. Mouth hanging open. Unseen chills racing through me.

If you've never heard six part close harmony done to perfection, don't think my reaction was extreme.

They always sign autographs after the show. As it turned out, my friend had another friend with her who had housesat for one of the singers previously. The guys were going out for a drink, and by association I got to go too.

We went to one of the nice hotel bars downtown, and all sat around for a couple of hours. Nicest group of guys.

I, having not donned my road warrior shoes at this point in my life was fascinated by several things, the geography of their lives being one of them.

I was sitting between Jeremy and Colin. Colin was getting over a cold and was resting his voice. Jeremy, however, was full of stories.

At some point in the conversation I asked him to send me a postcard from some place exotic, and he said he would.

I went in to work the next morning, and being a music store, there were several folks there who had been to the concert, and were talking about how great it was, and one-upping each other on their seat locations.

Finally I said I went too. And that they all had better seats than I did, no doubt.

However...

They they all stood there with their mouths hanging open.

Not very long at all after that, Jeremy sent me a postcard from the very exotic Lawrence, Kansas. Then he sent me one from Japan, and for several years I had a pen pal and any time the group was close I went to see them, took someone who had never seen them before with me, watched their same reactions as mine, then met the guys afterward, hugged them like old friends, and went out for beers with them as their travel schedule allowed.

So last night they were at the Newberry Opera House.

The title of the last half of their program was called Simple Gifts. While the songs weren't listed, I was hoping with everything that I had, that they would sing The Gift to be Simple.

It was the first song I ever heard them sing that haunted me, relentlessly, in the best way possible.

I listen to it all the time. (Like I do with any music that haunts me in relentlessly good ways.) But hearing it live, in an accoustically magnificent venue, being they don't sing it all that often, well, that would be priceless.

And was worth a direct request to Karma.

Turned out that song wasn't on their list. Eventually they bowed, and left the stage.

They came back out for another bow, but did not sing, and left the stage.

Then they came back out for another bow, and they had changed order, so I knew they were going to sing at least one more song.

If the concert was recorded, then this is what the record will show:

I think it was David talking, but one of them said they were going to close the show with a song titled, "The Gift..."

At that point you don't hear rest of the title, you hear a high-pitched, pig-like squeal turned gasp along with inappropriate applause prior to the song. (There may have been a "yay" in there too.)

That was just me, thanking karma for the gift.

Saw the guys after the show. They had a long drive and a really early morning so there wouldn't be an after party. I had my smiles, though. I said my goodbyes and will see them in February in Clemson. I got one of their new CDs and listened to it on the drive home.

Through the remains of hurricane Ira.

All smiles.

So the other day I exported all 12 years of pondring to a text file for a backup.

Six hundred and sixty seven pages. (Even I was surprised.) That's just a fraction of what could have been posted. No, those six hundred and some pages were just excerpts from a much, much lengthier story.

I searched through the entire thing, and pulled out quite a few of the Dave Matthews posts. Truth be told, I could have kept on for hours, but stopped when I hit 41 pages. Because it really couldn't have been any other number.

I posted the entire lot, all 41 pages on one of pondring's appendages..

Give or take, it's 14,000 words. Which I hope is worth a picture. Maybe that 41 or any other art Dave sees fit to bestow after hanging with me for a bit after Thursday's show.

Believe it or not, comments are on over there.