Category: Uncategorized

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Last night Susan and I went to an awesome concert at Three Stages in Folsom featuring BeauSoleil Quartet avec Michael Doucet and Tom Rigney & Flambeau.

I just can’t tell you how awesome this was. I haven’t heard much Cajun or Zydeco music since my last trip to New Orleans (about 15 years ago…how time flies…) and even so, I never would have expected anything this good. These two world-class bands were just amazing.

Michael Doucet not only played up a storm, but also told interesting stories about many of the tunes (while looking a bit like a tall Cajun Santa Claus). Tom Rigney gave a good impression of a mad Cajun leprechaun onstage. Any member of his band Flambeau would be comfortably accepted in any blues band I’ve ever seen.

The best part is that you don’t have to be into Zydeco, Cajun or even blues to dig these guys with their perfect mix of high energy and mellowed-out musicianship, perfected to the last note. Just don’t miss either one if they’re anywhere near you!

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I said it almost 15 years ago, and now it’s gotten worse.

Back then it was Bill Clinton being hailed by idiots far and wide as “the first black president”, even though he was patently not black and barely acting presidential.

Now, Newsweek — a once-respected publication that was recently sold for the princely sum of $1 — has published a cover on which Barack Obama is touted as “the first gay president”, apparently based solely on his new, “sort-of-favoring-gay-marriage” political position.

I rest my case.

Unless, of course, BHO is planning to admit to all those gay rumors that have been swirling about for years…

Update: The Atlantic has gone this story one better, pointing out how Obama has even been called “The First Jewish President”, “The First Female President”, and a host of other stupidisms. And they reminded me that it was Tina Brown who was the editor of The New Yorker when a writer in that publication called Clinton “the first black president” (and is the current editor of Newsweek). Sorry, I don’t generally follow the careers of people like that (rich, entitled liberals).

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My sister Cheryl started acting seriously a few years ago (as opposed to acting silly, which she’s been perfecting her entire life), and her latest achievement is starring as Abby Brewster in a very cool production of Arsenic and Old Lace in Vallejo (which closes this weekend). The play (and she) got pretty good reviews in the Benicia Herald (and also in the Vallejo Times-Herald, but they’re too stupidly greedy to keep articles online from less than a month ago on the off chance they can get some sucker to pay $3 each to read them).

Actor Bios
Actor Bios

But don’t just go to see Cheryl. The production is damn good in general, especially Scott Slagle’s cheerfully loony Teddy Brewster and Erik Donovan Cox as his brother Jonathan, who managed to pull off some world-class creepy. Just what the doctor ordered for the part, and in this case I could also be talking about Dr. Einstein (not that Einstein!), well played by Remington Stone. Also they have senior and student discounts. Bonus: the theater is surrounded by great little Asian restaurants (I managed to score some Vietnamese noodle take-out during intermission).

Cheryl Fiedler with Steven Fiedler
Two Actors, No Hamming

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KGB reportedly spent $2.6 million on their Super Bowl ad inviting people to use their service, but should have done some investment in their servers instead. According to our source with quite a bit of KGB experience (who will go unnamed), s/he only received two questions during the entire Super Bowl due to KGB servers being so overloaded that they turned off virtually all features of their site (including CSS) and begged people not to refresh their screens.

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Well, it seems that the folks at Google have been working really hard this Labor Day weekend, because Techcrunch spilled the beans this morning that Google will be releasing its new Chrome browser beta tomorrow for Windows.

While everyone on Digg has been following the Democratic convention, followed by the McCain/Palin excitement, Google has been putting the finishing touches on Chrome totally under the radar. The important facts are these:

  • Chrome’s tabs all run as totally separate processes / threads with their own data and memory, so if one of them crashes, or hangs, it leaves the rest of the browser running.
  • This means that Chrome does virtually all its own memory management, and since as a browser it has access to your files and file system, for all intents and purposes it can be thought of as a separate operating system.
  • Running with Gears will allow Chrome to do quite a bit of operating even when the host computer is offline.

Which all means that Google has suddenly raised the “operating system in the cloud” question again…with the added twist of bandwidth caps coming into the mix.

Whoops, I almost forgot the official comic book.

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What Your ISP Doesn’t Want You to Know

As no doubt everyone knows by now (except maybe Barack Obama, who had better things to do tonight), Comcast has announced an upcoming 250 GB/month bandwidth cap on its residential broadband cable Internet customers, all of whom have signed up for unlimited service based on Comcast’s own advertising.

Before I get to reaming them out, I’d like to state for the record that (a) I’m a Comcast customer, (b) I’m more or less a satisfied Comcast customer, (c) I’m also a captive Comcast customer, since our county commissioners saw fit to make a monopoly deal with Comcast, no doubt in exchange for lots of money promises of excellent service. So if they should happen to cut me off for what they call “excessive use” or even for writing this article, I will have nowhere to go but dialup or satellite, which is to say: hell.

First of all, let us not look at Comcast or any particular broadband ISP, but all of them. Because as American taxpayers, we’ve already paid $200 billion to upgrade our country’s Internet infrastructure to a 45 Mbps fiber optic network. And we paid this money more or less directly to the telecoms: the giant companies that run everyone’s landline telephone service. And we don’t have this system yet, in spite of the fact that we were supposed to have it running years ago.

Continue reading →

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Here I was, taking lots of great pictures and presumably uploading them automatically, when I suddenly find out that hours ago, Flickr had stopped accepting pictures because I had uploaded too many in one day or something. I’ve used lots of photo services and I was starting to like Flickr because of their geotagging support, but this is ridiculous. Don’t they exist to let you put pictures on the web, or something?

Meanwhile, if you’re interested in my live coverage of Wordcamp 2008, please check out my Wordcamp 2008 album on Photobucket. No limits!