If the number of small bugs I’ve previously reported to Apple that have been fixed in 10.6 is any indication of how much they really meant by what they said about 10.6 being focused on stability and speed rather than new features, well, they weren’t lying. Hurray for them.

I heard the story about the 19 illegal immigrants people filing out of a crashed van after high–speed chase a week or 2 ago, but I just saw the footage over on Jalopnik. They get the award for best article title of the year.

Saturday night was an hellaciously fun gig. I hadn’t played a Halloween gig since probably 1994. The costumes were much better than they used to be. Lots of hotties too; stripper cop chicks, a “women in trouble” prison guard, a cheerleader, and my absolute favorite was a hot nun whose miniskirt was laced on the sides—a nice glimpse of her thighs almost all the way up to her hip—and juuuust covered her ass, exposing a bit of glute–meets–leg curve when she’d make certain moves while dancing, and once a tiny sliver of her panties peeked out once. That might’ve been the point where I forgot how to play drums for about 17 bars. Fantastic legs up to here (I’m holding my hand up to about chin level), sheathed in black hose. I’ll be taking a look at the video footage tonight. Hopefully there is a good shot of her, but I doubt it. She was always at the corner of the dance floor, stage right, which is opposite the camera, so she was probably hidden behind others.

It was nice when we got there at 6:30, but colder and windier than hell when we were loading up. That lasted all through Sunday and finally today the wind is dying down. Yuck. Fall is great up to a certain point where it absolutely sucks and turns into Winter.

I got Kim Völkerball, a live Rammstein DVD/CD combo for her birthday and we hadn’t gotten around to watching the DVD until today. Neither of us had seen them perform live before. Oh mein gott! They are so fucking cool. The definitive industrial performance. This video is the first song of the concert (in France, no less). The man definitely knows how to make an entrance. That goose–step march he takes to the front of the stage cracked me up. I like the one guitarist in lederhosen and a serial killer look. Dig the geek on that steam punk type keyboard “accordian”. They are very German and precise in their musicianship. It will be hard to come down to playing our music tonight.

Here’s another one where 3 of them have flamethrowers attached to their fucking faces. Flamethrowers! On their faces! That starts at about 2:30 into the video. You sure as hell don’t want to look down to check your finger position on the frets when that thing goes off. And that’s not the only appearance of fire or explosions emanating from or towards a member of the band. How the hell do they get insurance?

We have a gig tonight. It sure seems like it’s been months since we’ve played. I guess a huge group of people are going to be there in costume. I’ll probably choose the costume that I usually used in The Dial Tones; a priest. Black clothes, a piece of white tape, learn how to rape young boys, and I’ll fool them all!

Tomorrow will be a lay around day. We have plenty of horror and sci–fi movies on the DVR to keep us entertained. Kim recorded 200 Motels for me. Ain’t she sweet? I always wanted to see that. I ran out to Best Buy this morning to get the largest battery they make for guitarist John’s new HD camcorder. I also picked up a 6' component video cable. Now that the receiver is a bit further from the TV, the old wouldn’t reach. So some time—maybe tomorrow—I’ll have to slide the stereo cabinet way out, take the TV off the wall, replace the cable in the wall, etc. I think I’ll also hook the TV up to the HD antenna, since the antenna has not been used ever since DirecTV started pumping the locals in HD. That would be handy for those times when rainstorms block the satellite and we’d like to watch the local weather alerts and radars.

Woohoo! My receiver finally arrived. Marantz was a bit slow in shipping the larger items. When I unboxed it, the first thing I noticed was a clear plastic sheet that’s adhered to the chassis around the speaker binding posts, which prevents accidental shorting of a speaker circuit to ground caused by a stray wire that didn’t make it into the screw–down post, etc. Cripes. Such a simple feature to add. I believe I read that it’s now standard in Europe.

I spent a good part of the evening moving things around the getting it hooked up. Part of that time was spent wondering why the fuck it wasn’t working, or why the satellite DVR seemed to be frozen/crashed. I finally figured out that the DVR chose that time to discover and download new software, so it was mostly unresponsive. Then another good hunk of time was wasted when I had the outdoor speakers hooked up to the wrong set of posts. Slightly more verbose instructions would’ve made that clear. The manuals for these things are huge, but they’re still too terse in many areas.

During lunch today I’ll set up the supplied mic in our 3 seating positions and let it do the speaker distance and EQ setup. Couldn’t do that last night because Kim was practicing, and that would’ve thrown it off. I also played with FM HD. I didn’t know that multiple stations can now be carried on the same frequency. Like the metal station 93.7 has a completely different station on the HD2 channel of 93.7. And another frequency has 3 stations. Lordy. With so many choices for music sources these days, who has time to listen to them all?

I love the shelf supports in our cabinet; they actually screw into threaded inserts embedded in the sides. I can put this 33lb bitch on the shelf without fear of them tearing out.

Whoa! Here’s some of the most kick–ass Halloween photography I’ve ever seen. Super creepy, man. Note the button–eyed little girl painting on the wall in the wolf scene. These would go perfectly well with some Alice Cooper background music, like his new album. It’d be amazing to recreate one of these scenes for real outside our front door for next Friday night.

I have the song Yellow Submarine on one of my mp3 CDs I keep in the truck, and every time it comes on it reminds me that I need to see the movie again. I haven’t seen it since, jeez, maybe jr. high. Here are 3 clips.

You want far out? Watch the Nesbitt’s orange pop commercial. I like the clever nod (or dig) at 7 Up there at the end with the “un–orange” suggestion for a slogan. I remember those cans. I might even have one, or maybe it was grape since I was way into grape pops when I was a kid.

First time we ate at a Happy Chef. Damned good American food, and you don’t even have to be over 70 to like it. I had a club melt (I think it was turkey, ham, bacon, and 2 cheeses on toast) and Kim had a hot turkey open–face sandwich.

This classic bowling alley sign was just down the road from the Happy Chef.

Something got fucked up while I was gone, so you might be getting a username/password prompt when it tries to load the current iTunes song data. I rebooted the cable modem, router, and Mac, but that didn’t help. I have a question up on the dyndns forum to see if anyone there can help.

We left Thursday for Spirit Lake, IA to visit Kim’s sister and family, and Kim’s brother and family who were visiting from Nashville, who we hadn’t seen for 2 or 3 years. Their youngest boy had to build a catapult for a school project, so the men folk and 2 boys went to the man store and got parts, then Bad Steve (Kim’s brother in law) cut the wood in his little shop and we all helped the boy build it. Her sister’s 2 kids are getting more unlike each other all the time; the boy (10 or 11) seems to have not gained any maturity or knowledge since he was 4, while the girl (maybe 8) seems closer to a very sweet, happy, and outgoing 16–year old. She’s so lovable and easy to have a conversation with, while he just annoys you by telling you about something stupid thing Sponge Bob did, and he’ll do it over and over until you listen to him.

I took some pictures of a couple cool things we found along the highway in Mankato, MN. I’ll post those some time that’s not now.

Yeah, I love typography and fonts, but not as much as some people. Still, this font faux pas in The Pirates of Silicon Valley is sorta funny (maybe only to type geeks). I sure as hell didn’t notice it.

This guy sure knows his fonts. Click around his site to find tons of other movie font anachronisms. Some are obvious, like the tombstone in Back to the Future III, or Chicago in almost anything.

Remember those insanely cool typewriter/computer machines in Brazil? Here’s one that works and is based on a 1923 Underwood typewriter and a 1988 Mac SE. Seeing it in its various build stages is interesting.

Here’s a whole collection of the Osamabamalama poster ripoffs. I like these:

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a garbage car. It’s amazing how some people go slightly insane with this sort of behavior. I mean, I like having stuff, but even when I had cars I didn’t care about, I never let the fast food trash on the back seat floor get more than 1 layer thick.

Whoa! Here’s a find worth preserving. A British cornershop was opened and the contents were exactly like they were the day it was closed more than 40 years ago. Where’s my subscription to Titbits magazine?

A chick named Dyna Moe (great name) has been coming up with some really boss art based on Mad Men. There are even some icons in there. The first thing I saw on her blog (great blog name too, BTW) was the headline “Thank You, Internet” and a picture of a dog in armor with a link to taxidermy squirrel armor below. No shit. Indeed. Thank you, internet.

Shorpy doesn’t just post old photos. One day last year he grabbed a shot of a letter from Beaver’s school and transcribed it. I love that kind of stuff, especially from a great show like Leave It to Beaver. There are some interesting comments about prop letters and such too.

So how come I don’t need these old Altec horns? PA’s always looked cooler back when the technology was more brute force. He’s also selling some HF drivers to attach to them. Just look at the size of those fuckers compared to the pop can.

Here’s something that never really took off; Ideal TCR slot cars. The cars had 3 brushes instead of 2, and a switch that let you control which lane it would run in; R for right, L for left, or Z for automatic zig–zag action. At least that’s what it says on the back of this Corvette’s original package.

Far out. Remember Crawdaddy magazine? There are a few for sale on eBay, natch.

Nice day today. I knew that because I brought in the garbage/recycling and went to get a haircut. Last night when I took the stuff to the curb it was pretty foggy. Hadn’t seen that for a while. I refrained from jumping an AMC Ambassador over Tallyrand at 60mph.

This weekend we did 2 things we’d never done before; ate at an IHOP and went to an Ikea. I recommend both. I couldn’t bring myself to get one of the specialty pancakes—they’re just too dessert–like for a main course. Instead I had a Colorado omelet the size of Pittsburg. It’s insane how huge portions are at American restaurants. No wonder most kids look like slobs these days. Half of my omelet made a nice lunch the next day. The waiter’s name was Bob and his voice sounded like the cop in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken who would go “you’re OK… you’re OK…” as he let people into official areas.

Ikea is like walking into a city within a building. It’s just so fuckin’ huge. It’s bigger than one wing of the Megamall. Look at the aerial photo. Ikea is north of the mall. I think the main rectangle is the store and that’s a ramp on the south side. It’s amazing how they can sell their stuff at such low prices when it’s so well made. Sure, the fit and finish can be imperfect if you look for it, but most of the stuff looks very good even close up. And the hardware they use on cabinets is good stuff, not like some plastic hinge you might find on a Wal-Mart cabinet.

Call of Duty 4 showed up yesterday. It looks sooo good. Aside from better graphic f/x and all that, the character movements are much more fluid and natural than anything I’ve played before. Even quirky little movements are there. It’s entertaining so far after about 1.5 hours of play. We’ll see how it goes as it progresses.

Here’s an interesting collection of HBO station ID animations. I have a few of the from–city–to–space intros on tapes. I also remember that HBO Behind the Scenes intro.

Anyone remember Gnip Gnop? It’s amazing how much fun we had back then flipping 3 balls back and forth at each other. I remember playing it once or twice somewhere.

The Venture Brothers continues with its tradition of excellent writing and all around creative shtuff. This is now my favorite character. Too bad he got killed in his first episode. It’s hilarious that a guy from space can’t do better than using an overdriven amp and speaker to project his voice. I want my voice to sound like that all the time. The whole gag of an alien among the Earthlings who is only supposed to observe and be ignored, but is 12’ tall, uses RGB beam eyes, and his voice hurts your ears, that’s comedy genius.

Yeah, it’s a sickness that causes me to go back and watch the same John Daker videos over and over. Here’s a woman named Pearl Gross from the same group doing some standup comedy. It’s pretty painful, but you should go at least until a couple minutes into it when she tells one made famous by Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther Strikes Again. Hmm, Peter Sellers doing an amazingly ridiculous French accent or some old woman with a Blue Collar Comedy Tour accent. Call in and vote NOW!

I pre–ordered Call of Duty 4 exactly 2 months ago. Amazon kept sending me updates on when it would ship, because Aspyr’s release date was still fluid. But this morning they say they’ve shipped it. Let’s hope it doesn’t suck. I’ve found Spore to be a good time sync, even though nothing new really happens once you spend a few hours in the space stage. Once the Spore bucks start rolling in, you can just buy all the crap you need (weapons, terraforming tools, etc), go through worm holes to jump across the galaxy, always keep a posse of your ally’s ships with you for increased battle strength, etc. You also get to a point where you’ve heard each set of voices they created that get used by each new race you encounter. One voice sounds exactly like Thomas Haden Church. I haven’t checked the credits to see if they hired him for voice work. So if I had no attention span the game might get boring, but luckily I can veg out stay focused for hours at a time.

The other thing I’m waiting for is our new receiver. We need a newer one that can handle the new audio codecs found on Blu–ray. It’s sad that at the rate this shit is changing, a receiver a couple years old is obsolete. Everything I read about the Marantz SR8002 was very good, and since I’ve always wanted to own Marantz, I got it. Plus it has more than enough beef to handle driving a set of Martin Logan speakers, should I happen to buy a lottery ticket and win big or inherit a fortune. Anyhoo, the guy at Stereoland said it usually took 5–7 days for Marantz products to arrive. That was nearly a month ago. Grrr.

Check my Spore page for my latest creations, which include a Zamboni (somebody else made a better one, but I just went from memory), a crappy attempt at the Mad magazine zeppelin (can’t add wheels to a water or air craft), and the Dragula (couldn’t find anything good to make the correct funeral wagon type lanterns with).