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With Stevie! They were fantastic. Stevie said it was the best concert he had ever been to. We both got excited and nervous at the same time when they opened with a medley of old tunes that we both knew and loved. “Uh oh. Is this one song their homage to the first 15 years of the band? Is the rest of the concert going to be jammed with stuff we’ve never heard?” Well, we weren’t disappointed in the slightest. The show was a mix of old and new and darnit if every single song they played sounded like a super-hit to my ears. It was like a 3 hr “Best of” show…. Most bands don’t have 3 hours of best-of material. But they did! :-)

After intermission, their second song was Tom Sawyer, I called Trav (who should have gone, he really should have) and held up the phone. It sounded a little like this.

Rush at Saratoga Springs, Monday August 9th, 2004!

Don’t they sound great on my cell phone?

The bike for Burning Man is sweet. It’s in my back seat right now. From the ad:

MOUNTAIN BIKE, 7 spd Trek, Antelope 820, used 3 times $99.

(It’s actually a 21 speed, but that’s ok) And it was exactly as advertised.

Outlook 2000 had a tiny little feature whereby when your mouse hovered over a web link, the target would appear in the status bar down at the bottom of the window. Outlook 2002 eliminated this feature, making forged emails like this (at right. Click
to enlarge) possible.

The link on that email takes you to this web page (at left). Everything appears to be all on the up and up, right? Wrong. Look closely at that web page… at the top of the email. The address is “http://63.203.30.222/registration/Verify.htm” That isn’t a Paypal address. It’s a thief’s address.

If Outlook hadn’t gotten rid of that little feature, it would have been harder to pull the wool over people’s eyes on this kind of scam. Hmmm…. I’ve been hearing how Microsoft is pushing for an email postage/verification/something system lately. Am I just a wacky conspiracy theorist by suggesting that Microsoft is crippling their own program in order to make their new email verification system more necessary? No, that’s crazy.

It was initially a pain to organize but I’m so glad that I finally got to see Robot Stories with friends! The initial plan was to see it on opening night at The Cinema Village theater in NYC. I had sent out emails and organized so that about 5 friends and I would go to the 7:40 show. River was a late comer so he tried to get a ticket online. But it was sold out. It’s a good thing he emailed me that because I didn’t have tickets yet! I was going to go all the way into the city and meet for dinner just to find out I couldn’t get into the show! Both shows were sold out on opening night so we had to reschedule. Another round of invites went out for the Wednesday 7:40 show. Glenn, Shara, Jim D, Marian, and Marah said “yes”.

What a great evening! It started out with a minor miracle… I found a place to park on 3rd between 11th & 12th. But I realized that I didn’t have any quarters for the meter. A guy parked right next to me so I got out and asked to buy quarters from him. I looked in my wallet and frowned as I noticed that all I had were $20s. He gave me a quarter… yes, that’s right gave me a quarter and suggested that I use the 15 minutes to find more quarters. :-)

I got some quarters at a costume & magic shop right nearby (I’ll have to go back, they had fun things). I walked to the theater and noticed that there was free street parking right in front of the theater starting at 6pm. At 5:40, no one had shown up so I fetched my car and sat in it ’til 6. I parked right in front of the theater!

Glenn showed up at 6 and we met in front of the theater. We walked to the restaurant and met up with Marian and Marah. Dinner was just peachy. The talk was really nice. It’s nice to be social! We went off to the theater and met Jim in front. In we went. We were there 10 minutes before showtime and the theater was packed! There were only about 180 seats or so but.. it was packed! We found 6 seats in the first and second row.

I spent New Years eve in Philadelphia. Saw fireworks right up close! I was there with PPG and several PP friends. PPG’s Sw has an apartment right on the river (no, literally. If you drilled a hole in his living room, you’d hit a parking level and then water!) The party itself was a bit low key for my taste, but the apartment is lovely. Red curtain, amazing modular wall storage up to 18 feet, rice paper lighting, and a winch-operated table!

I saw it Saturday night in the city with M&M Sprague & PPG.

What an amazing movie.
– They actually built Minas Tirith! Well, of course they didn’t physically build the whole thing… some parts only exist in a computer. But they still designed every inch of the place!
– I felt Tolkien’s “alternate psychology” so much more intensely when seeing it than when reading. (IE: Gollum and Sam are physical representations of different aspects of Frodo. Denethor represents a Tolkienian archetype)
– I’ll go so far as to say that ROTK (and the other 2 movies… especially combined) is a solid contender to replace the original Star Wars as the Zeus in the pantheon of movie greats.

Friday night: Saw my good friend Marian Heller at Don’t Tell Mama. I (of course) got there a few minutes late AGAIN. I videotaped most of her show. Afterward, Marian, her friend Lisa, her new friend Don K. and myself went out to a very nice meal a few blocks north. NYC restaurants all try so hard to impress… and I’m so easily impressed. :-) Then we went off to Deutch’s Halloween party on 27th and 3rd. The party wasn’t to my liking. I went back to Marian’s after the party. Parking was (miraculously) not a problem near her apartment. Good sleepy-time conversation and a good night’s rest later, Saturday began.

Saturday: Back home for a breather and a nap. Then off to pick up my tuxedo in Woodbridge (see below). Off to pick up PPG. We were off to her company’s owner’s Halloween masquerade party. Wow. The place was wow. I felt like we were in a James Bond movie or at the new Bellagio hotel. One thing I’ll remember is the aquarium (10′ long x 6′ high x 5′ deep) with all manner of fish. For the first time, it didn’t look like “animals in a cage”. The sheer opulence of the whole place, the small section of wall in the dining room that wasn’t painted (oop! I -am- after all a QA guy at heart), The secluded walk around the back of the house. The most delicate chocolate mousse I’ve ever had in my life. I could go on listing… food, band, dancing, easy laughing, enticing the waitstaff, pewter glasses, cosmopolitans…

Sunday: After coming home from the party and sleeping in Edison, we packed up her itty bitty room and moved it all to her new place in Metro 2409! The place is terrific. It doesn’t have a movie theater, pool room, and bowling alley, but it -does- have wonderful country lines and angles, entirely new everything, a white picket fence, a warm homey feeling, a lovely backyard, and a short walk to Everything! We had dinner at Down to Earth in Metro 2409. I hope I never forget the powerful warm “everything is going to be alright” feeling we shared while sitting in the corner in the candle-light, eating chocolate cake.

All 45 megs of it! [removed]

Download it with mad abandon, I now have 10 gig of bandwidth/month. [12-10-03 removed because I’ve got scads of bandwidth but limited space :-( )

I caught the trailer for MR today. I am sad to realize that the Wachowski Brothers only had one Matrix movie in them.

Cyberpunk Highlander. Ugh.

My senator wrote back to me today (via email) about how he’s co-sponsoring federal anti-spam legislation:

Dear Mr. Sonko,

Thank you for contacting me about spam. I appreciate hearing from you on this issue.

The growth of the Internet and the increased use of e-mail have led to the emergence of “spam,” or electronic junk mail. Numerous marketers have begun to send unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE) over the Internet. Because this marketing technique is easier and less costly than traditional direct marketing techniques such as direct mail solicitations, e-mail accounts worldwide have been deluged with this unsolicited correspondence.

Spam is not just a nuisance, but it can also bring consumers higher charges for the Internet as service providers are forced to continually upgrade their systems to handle the increased traffic. Spam filters built into MSN and Hotmail servers, for example, block 2.4 billion messages a day. While proponents of UCE insist it is a legitimate marketing technique that is protected by the First Amendment, Congress should enact reasonable restrictions.

Although 35 States have anti-spam laws, there is no federal law specifically concerning spam. Consequently, I have co-sponsored CAN-SPAM, the “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act” (S. 877), which would do the following: create criminal penalties for the transmission with knowledge and intent of spam messages with header information that is materially false or misleading; prohibit deceptive subject headings; require a functioning return address for the message recipient to submit a request that he or she not receive future messages; require clear identification that a message is an advertisement; and require that message recipients have an opportunity to opt-out, and for the sender to provide a valid physical mail address.

Please be assured that I will continue to support practical, sensible regulations that reduce unwanted spam while taking the concerns of legitimate, honest retailers into account.

Thanks again for contacting me.

Senator Frank Lautenberg
http://lautenberg.senate.gov/