October 2002

I have my clock radio set to some adult contemporary-type of morning show, much like CHUM-FM in Toronto. At 8:30, they had some news and announced that Jam Master Jay had been shot and killed last night in New York City. I was kind of not awake at the time, so it didn’t really register, but once I got into work and checked the news, reality hit me. Here was a guy who was part of a really seminal group in hiphop, Run DMC; a group that helped bring hiphop to the mainstream. He wasn’t a gangsta rapper, in fact the group advocated non-violence. It just doesn’t seem fair.

On an unrelated note, I’m listening to Beck’s new album right now. It’s really good, definitely a different sound from the other albums. It’s been described as a “breakup” album, but optimistic and melancholic at the same time. I haven’t recently broken up with anyone, so I’m not really feeling dumped, but it’s a nice introspective headphone experience. I encourage you to obtain it.

So Friday night a bunch of interns + Ed went to see Amon Tobin at I-Spy. It was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. I-Spy isn’t exactly the classiest place, but apparently it’s really popular for underground-type concerts. We got there around 10:30 and Bonobo was about midway through his set. I’ve been meaning to pick up his album for a while, but was never sure how the rest sounded. Since Friday I’ve obtained it and it’s great, very laidback. This review pretty much sums up his sound. After Bonobo finished, Prefuse 73 came on. Now I really love his album, Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives, but the sound didn’t translate well into a live setting. He (Prefuse 73) was super shy too, so he didn’t have much of a stage presence. Near the end of the set, P-Love (the host/third DJ) came on and mixed a few songs in with Prefuse 73 and that went over well with the crowd. P-Love then did his own set solo for a while. He looks exactly like Kid Koala, I swore they were twins. I really liked his set, he mixed in some Justin Timberlake and “Bootylicious”, which the crowd appreciated and finished off with DJ Shadow’s “Organ Donor”. I really liked that. Finally, at about 12, the man himself, introduced as “The New Prince of Darkness” came on. P-Love said beforehand that Ninjatune looks out for their audience and handed out free earplugs. At that point I knew it would be a very loud show. I don’t think Amon said one word throughout the whole show, but he didn’t really need to. He spun/programmed for about an hour and a half, which definitely satisfied the crowd. He mixed a lot of his tunes off of Supermodified and Out From Out Where overtop of drum & bass beats. It was interesting to dance to, especially since it was probably over 200 bpm. It was a really mixed crowd too, many people in their 30s who all seemed to know each other. Afterwards I bought a shirt that was only $15 with Amon’s logo on it. It’s pretty cool. That’s my story about Friday.

Well it seems that Bowling For Columbine was the popular movie to see this weekend. You can read ’ review here. Now other things did happen this weekend, and I may talk about them in another post, but this one is devoted to talking about this movie. First of all, if you get a chance to see this movie, you definitely should cash in your chips and go. I think it’s a movie that most people should see, if only to think about whether the questions that Michael Moore raises are valid or not.

Personally, I thought it was a great movie. Since my family lives in Michigan, I know a lot of the places discussed in the movie. In fact, the mall they talk about in the movie, Great Lakes Crossing, is where I go to shop. Also, the local news coverage they show, like Fox 2, Local 4, and WXYZ, are probably some of the most sensationalist news shows that I’ve ever seen. All of the stereotypes you see about American local news is on these channels, but then they also take it up a notch and put their own spin on things. The scene involving Kmart headquarters is just a few miles from our house.

We saw the movie at a movie theatre in the U district downtown, so the crowd was mostly college-age or at least college-educated. Of course we were impressed by the scenes about Canada, mainly because Moore painted us in a good light despite the fact that we have a high ratio of guns (about 7 for every 10 families). Of course Moore puts his own spin on the facts, but sometimes it’s nice to see the flipside of things; it makes you evaluat what your viewpoints are. The interview with Charlton Heston made the crowd grumble, probably because he said some things that were borderline racist.

Overall though, it was a very thought-provoking piece. Seeing those images from the Columbine security cameras made me remember where I was when that all happened, which was of course sitting in front of the TV not believing what I was seeing. This post took a bit longer than I had anticipated, but at least I finished it.

So since Ed was here this weekend, we figured it would be fun to do some tourist things around Seattle, especially since I haven’t seen such things myself. Saturday was all about the Underground Tour, which takes you under the old buildings in Seattle. Basically there was a big fire in 1889 and the city wanted to remedy its sewage problems, so they decided to raise all of the old city up one story. In some places this means that there’s a difference of 10 feet between the new “first floor” and the old one and in others it’s up to 35 feet. We had a very funny tour guide, who told us that when they did a census of what the most popular occupations were in the town, seamstress was #1, which was funny because they couldn’t find any sewing machines. Go figure. Being a bureaucracy, they decided to impose a tax on these women and the town became very wealthy because this tax was the equivalent of $400 per month today. After that, we went to Pike’s Place Market, which is the popular farmer’s market in Seattle. Then it was time for dinner, which consisted of Gordon Biersch’s Brewery. Then there was the previously discussed Bowling For Columbine experience. After that was done, we went back to Sandy’s place and watched Windtalkers. I had heard some pretty bad things about this movie and the good news is that they were all right. The movie didn’t have much cohesion or consistency throughout and it seemed like the main focus was on the white men in the army trying to protect these defenseless, eternally optimistic Navajo. The movie ended around 4, so Ed and I went home but then we realized that Daylight Savings Time had just ended, and it was in fact 3. Yahoo! One extra hour. It did make a difference, since I woke up pretty rested. We wanted to see some more sights on Sunday, so we hit up the Museum of Flight, sponsored by Boeing and the Seattle Aquarium. Both very cool. We then just walked around the shopping district for a while until Ed’s train arrived.

We just had our weekly alcohol-fueled meeting and since all of October is part of the giving campaign, we had a pie-tossing event, with all proceeds going to charity. The amounts of money people could afford at an auction like this was ridiculous. One of the VPs went up and the bidding started at $1000. The top earner got about $1600. Another intern said that 3 coworkers spent $1200 to see a special showing of The Two Towers two days earlier than the release. All of these figures are in US dollars too. I guess as long it all goes to charity it’s good, I wonder if they accept donations to The Human Fund.

BBC Radio London made a very large mistake this month. They decided to scrap all of their music to make way for more talk radio. Now I understand that talk radio has its place in society, but when this means cutting Solid Steel I need to draw the line. If you’ve never listened to Solid Steel, well you’re missing out. It’s been on the air since 1988 and has an enormous, worldwide audience. It’s probably one of the best regular mix shows that I’ve come across. Luckily though, the guys are still planning on keeping the show going, it will be online-only from now on. I’m listening to their last radio show right now, as kind of a tribute.

So tomorrow I have to submit my request for full-time interviews here. I’m supposed to pick my preferred technology groups and state when I’d like to have interviews and attach my resume. I guess I’ll have to update my resume before I submit it because I should probably target it more specifically to the types of jobs I’m applying for. I can’t believe that I’m already at the stage where full-time interviews will be taking place. Even this term has flown by; it seems like yesterday when we started here. I gave a presentation on my feature today to the devs in my group, they all seemed pretty impressed and thought I did a great job. I thought I probably could have done it faster, but if they’re pleased then that’s good. I also have my midterm review on Monday (was supposed to be today) – all indications point to it going well, but I’ve been surprised before by these things.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Launchcast this week. I created my own station and rated all of the music that I like really high and everything else got a big red X. I find the whole system fascinating. I really want to know how it picks the next song. I guess it wouldn’t be that hard if you had everything in the system and linked together. I definitely want something like this for my own music system. The bad times were when it would play something that’s “popular on all Launchcast stations”. That would take about 2 seconds to ban. The other annoying thing are the ads, which come on randomly every 5 to 30 minutes. They announce their artist and emerging artist of the month and ask for you to visit the page. I tried rating these artists really know to see if it would affect the ad cycling, but it had no effect. Today I decided to listen to a really cool Shoutcast station; I was at work until late last night and it was very soothing to work to. Tomorrow is Amon Tobin and Ed is coming up for the weekend. Should be a fun time.

This story kind of surprised me, but at the same time it wasn’t completely unexpected. American companies will do anything to trim that important bottom line, but pretending that Indian workers are in America and are American? Please, that’s a bit much. It’s funny reading what some American callers thought when they found out the person they were talking to wasn’t even on the same hemisphere.

Sandy and I rented this movie last night. I’m sure you’ve heard of it, it’s by the same director as Memento, which every geek and his brother has seen. This movie was very different though, which is a good thing. It moved at a slower pace but had more character development. Although it’s a remake (original also called Insomnia), it was still a great movie. I especially liked the opening shots; it reminded me of Bjork’s Joga video (Quicktime). I don’t think Sandy thought as highly of the movie, it seemed like Al Pacino’s voice was getting on his nerves. The score for this movie was great, I think it was the same guy that did Memento. I’m a sucker for that broody string music. The website for Insomnia was pretty cool too, it had a bunch of puzzles you had to solve.

This was a pretty busy weekend for me.

Friday night a bunch of interns went out clubbing downtown. We were supposed to go to this Clubvibes.com members-only event at the Deep Down Lounge, but when we got there they were playing bad music (happy hardcore) and there were maybe 4 other people there. So we walked down the street to Tiki Bob’s Cantina. It was a fun place, played a good mix of music (rock, hip hop, R&B, techno) and there was a good crowd there too. The guys at the club were a bit agressive, meaning that they wouldn’t give you any room to dance or move around. It’s such a power thing, but funny to watch when they try and hit on a girl and they get shot down. Girls here are strange too; they’ll dance with anyone pretty sensually and then pick up some other guy. It’s kind of different from back home and from what I hear very different from Quebec. After the club closed (1:30), it was still too early for us so we went to an after-hours place for a while called the Bohemian. They were playing some neat music, it was almost like they were remixing 80’s songs overtop of trance beats. We danced for a while and then we realized that a) the crowd looked pretty rough and b) there weren’t many people there, so we went home.

Saturday I woke up late, watched some college football and Robocop (“Your move creep”). At about four o’clock we went over to watch Hockey Night in Canada in Redmond, which is becoming a weekly tradition. It was a special game too because the Montreal Canadiens were playing the Toronto Maple Leafs and since we had people from Toronto and Montreal, we couldn’t pass this up. It was kind of strange watching a hockey game in the middle of the afternoon, but the wings and beer made it feel like home. I had to leave early though since I had tickets to Jurassic 5 (woohoo!). It was an all-ages show at the Showbox downtown and for some stupid reason the doors opened at 6:30. I was going with a friend living downtown, so I had to drive down there (in the rain no less), park and then walk to the concert. It was a very young crowd; mainly white male teenagers although there were a lot of teenage girls there too. It’s about the right audience that I was expecting. They had a great vibe though, everyone was super excited to see the band. The opening act Skillz went on around 7:30 and they got the crowd hyped up even more. They had some good rhymes, especially when they were dissing mainstream hip hop artists. Jurassic 5 came on around 8:15 and boy were they pumped to be there! It was so cool to see a band so excited to be performing. They really love what they do, and they do it really well. They played a bunch of songs from their two albums and even some songs from their original EP. Their DJs, Cut Chemist and Numark put on an amazing intermission set complete with a turntable Cut Chemist wore around his neck while scratching. Simply outstanding skill. Unfortunately Jurassic 5 had to be off by 9:30, which was kind of disappointing. Sachin and I went back to his place where some other interns were supposed to meet up before we went out for the evening (we knew that it would be an early finish). We went to the Lava Lounge, which wasn’t so great, but it was good to be out with the people, especially Bart. He was with Omar in Spain during the summer when the car accident happened. It was kind of weird hearing about what happened but I felt better knowing that Omar was having a lot of fun in Spain. One other note about the Lava Lounge, it really pays off to have a dog; one guy came in with his dogs and girls were all over him (well more the dogs, but it’s the means to an end I guess). A few of us left the bar early to get some pizza, and boy was that good! So damn tasty, especially after you’ve been drinking.

Sunday was another late sleep-in, talked with the fam and then Mat and I went to the Brown Bag Cafe for breakfast at around 2:30. They’re only open until 3, so we had to hurry. This place has the most gigantic portions ever. If you’re hungry, this place will teach you just how hungry you need to be to finish your meal. I apparently did better than most and I still left half a plate behind. Ah well, the moral of the story was that this filled me up for the rest of the day; I didn’t feel any hunger all night. Mat went off to work and I watched some football and read some RFCs for work and for a project I’m working on. Sunday was more of a relaxing day, as is usually the case. Driving around Redmond though made me want to take some pictures at some point, there are some cool views around here.

So that’s about it, not terribly exciting all of the time, but it kept me busy.

So tonight I went to a concert. Not the type of concert I’ve been seeing for the last couple of years (i.e. a live band), but a symphonic concert. Yep, back to the old roots. I used to go to the Hamilton Philharmonic fairly regularly, but since university started, I haven’t really been involved with any classical music at all, which is kind of sad if you realize how much time I spent when I was younger involved in the scene. I played piano and violin, but my real passion was the piano. I really should pick it up again (not literally), but it’s hard to find time/resources to do it. I’m sure if I was really committed though, I could find some place to play; I just haven’t reached that point.

Anyway, back to tonight. It was the Seattle Symphony, which is fairly small, but still capable of playing. It was their first night in their “Mainly Mozart” series. They had a guest conductor and guest concertmaster. I never really enjoyed playing Mozart myself, but I did enjoy listening to his orchestral works. The man certainly was some genius; I mean, composing operas at the age of 6? Who does that now? Here is the list of pieces they played:

W.A. Mozart: Symphony No. 15, K.124

W.A. Mozart: Divertimento, K.136

J.S. Bach: Concerto for Two Violins and String Orchestra

W.A. Mozart: Serenade No. 13, K.525, Eine kleine Nachtmusik

W.A. Mozart: Symphony No. 29, K.201

The symphony (or maybe Symphony) has a Campus Club, whereby college students can get any ticket in the house for $10 if you purchase on the day of the performance. Sandy had his card, but I did not, but we didn’t think it would be a problem since I could just fill out the form right there and get our good seats. Unfortunately, the man behind the glass felt otherwise and stated some unwritten (new) rule that says you can’t fill out your membership and get the discount on the same day. Completely ridiculous if you ask me. Basically we had to sit in the “student section”, which means the front 6 rows. They ended up not being too bad, but it was a pain to argue with the man. When I got back here, I sent them an email with my application so I can receive the discount next time we go.

Yes, I am still at work, but I’m just about to go home. I took a class today and didn’t feel very productive, especially since I had to leave early to head downtown. I put in a couple of hours when I came back to the Eastside just so I could sleep better.

I’ll follow suit with everyone else and talk about my weekend. Sandy and I drove down to Portland, OR to visit with Ed. Fun times for sure.

Friday night we went to the Portland City Grill, which is at the top of one of the tallest buildings in Portland and has a nice view of the city. The maitre d’ wasn’t the most pleasant guy I’ve ever met, but he did let us in eventually. We had some sushi and a couple of drinks. It was then time for Banana Joe’s aka “The Meat Market”. I didn’t really have much money so I wasn’t drinking that much. We basically went upstairs, played pool and foos for a while and then hit the road. Ed has a pretty sweet setup at his place for watching movies/playing video games so him and Fran played GTA3 until about 4 when we went to bed.

Saturday we had some breakfast at IHOP, saw Ed’s office (pretty sweet lab) and then went downtown to do some sightseeing. Highlights include Mr. Statue, the world’s smallest city park, and the scary haunted house. We had some extra time before we were supposed to meet up with other people for the clubbing, so we saw The Transporter. As pointed out in his post, the movie isn’t that great. It was mildly entertaining and it was only $5.50 to see (compared with $13.50 back home, this is cheap). We went to a greek restaurant for dinner, which is average I guess. Post-dinner entertainment featured Lush, which was a super cool place. Downstairs features very comfortable seating and a DJ spinning some good hiphop/smooth jazz tunes. Perfect place for talking and chilling. Unfortunately not everyone enjoyed the atmosphere so we left at about 1 to go to the famous Kell’s Irish pub. It was a big bar, but the live entertainment was far too loud and not in tune, which made the whole experience somewhat disappointing. We then stumbled around the streets trying to find Buck’s car and then headed back to Ed’s, where we watched Road Trip. It was entertaining I guess, especially for 4 in the morning, but it’s not really a movie I intend on buying.

Sunday involved shopping, mainly because there is no sales tax in Oregon. We drove to Nike’s headquarters and Intel’s original headquarters (which are in Beaverton) and then we headed back downtown to Pioneer Place and bought a few things (a gift for a friend, some clothes). Dinner involed Chevy’s, a tex-mex place. It was pretty good, but by this point I was fairly sick with my cold/flu thing, so everything tasted pretty much the same. It was then time to drive back home, which took about 3 hours.

I would have posted this yesterday, but I only stayed until noon; I was far too ill to last the whole day. The delay did allow me to arrange my photos from the weekend however – they are located here.

This is possibly the greatest tool ever.

Wow. Sometimes you discover things that just floor you. That happened this morning when I loaded up this album – Jack Kevorkian + Morpheus Quintet: “A Very Still Life”. I downloaded this album a couple of weeks ago thinking that it was just a clever title of a jazz band. It turns out that the songs on this album are actually written by THE Jack Kevorkian (who plays the flute). I don’t know what surprises me more – the fact that Jack Kevorkian writes and plays jazz music or the fact that I’m really enjoying this music. I don’t know what to say here.

I was introduced to a new band today – Down To The Bone. This is great because I’ve been listening to the same kind of music for the past week or so and this is exactly the kind of music I was looking for. Of course this means that I’ll have to get their other albums (I’m listening to “From Staten To Manhattan” right now), but if they’re all as good as this one, it’ll be worth it!

My pictures from Mt. Rainier are up. You can access them here. I think I like the layout, but it may change as more pictures go up.

I never realized before the beginning of this term how many people shared the same musical tastes as me. Perhaps I have geeky tastes in music and I work at a company with many geeks, but I’ve found common ground musically with most people I’ve met here. I’ve even set up a Shoutcast streaming server to (locally) broadcast what I’m listening to. It’s kind of a cool feeling because others seems to respect my tastes in music and are eager to broaden their own.

We have a foosball table in our building here and I usually play a couple of times per day. It can be argued that the table here is nontraditional since there are 3 goaltenders on each side (or at least 3 players on the goaltender’s rod). This is also the same kind of table we have back at school, so I’m pretty used to this. Considering the skill level I started the term with, I’ve become much better at the game. There are some really good players here in the building and two of them put up a piece of paper next to the table. They want to create a ladder of doubles teams to see where everyone ranks. Such a geeky thing to do, but it should be fun. You could even say I’m optimistic on how our team is going to fare (hence the mood).

Today is Rob’s birthday and we’re taking him out to get him drunk. His girlfriend is coming for 5 days starting tomorrow so he really doesn’t want to go through with this, but I think he realizes that there’s no avoiding this oncoming train of drunkeness. This weekend I’m going to Portland to visit the Kaiser and I really need to get some laundry done before then; especially my jacket, which has a combination of smells now from our hike to Mt. Rainier and our white-water rafting trip two weekends ago.

So you may already know that music is a very important part of my life. This term however seems to be marking a second turning point in my listening history – I’m listening to more mainstream music. It’s not like I didn’t really listen to it before, but I never went out of my way to obtain it. This doesn’t mean that I’m purchasing mainstream music and I can’t really see that happening in the near future. This change in listening tastes applies especially to hiphop and R&B music – I’m listening to it on the radio, at work, and at clubs. This is not to say that I’ve never listened to hiphop before, I have a very large hiphop component to my music collection; it’s just that most of it has been underground. Maybe it’s about (finally) appreciating some of the good qualities of mainstream music. The full effect of this change may not be known for a while.

I haven’t really done much real work this morning so far, and since the morning is basically over in a few minutes, I guess I can call this an unproductive morning in my capacity as an employee. I’ve been busy organizing my pictures from our trip to Mt. Rainier yesterday. It was a fun climb and we had an amazing view of the mountain from our highest point. I was pretty sore last night and my legs are still a little stiff today but not as much as I had feared. Hopefully I’ll be able to post a link to the photo album later on today. I’m going to try out ImageStation since they have unlimited storage (for now) but I may move them (the pictures) to my ECE site.

So I bought a game yesterday. This is highly unusual for me, since a) I don’t play that many games and b) I definitely don’t buy much software. The game was UT2K3, which has been hyped for some time now. Unfortunately I can’t play this game online just yet because the only computer I have access to is using a proxy to connect. This means that the game locks up when trying to find out the servers available for each type of match. I’ll have to look into this on Monday when I have some free time. Hopefully there is a workaround. Tomorrow it’s Mont Rainier to climb – Upper Canada will prevail.

I just found out that Portishead will be coming out with a new album (finally). Beth Gibbons will also be coming out with a solo album this fall. For more details, check out this link.

So this is my first post. I’ve read some other people’s journals here at LiveJournal and I decided to get in on the action.

I’m a month into my last internship, and this term I’m working at a large software company in the Northwest. Can you guess which one? Of course you can.

So why a journal? Indeed, a great question to ask. I guess I want to share my unique viewpoint with the world, discussing such things as rabbits and cool music and life in general. I’m not guaranteeing that there will always be something interesting to read, but there will plenty of content.

Also, I just bought a digital camera, so when I get around to it, I’ll be putting up some pictures of my stay in the Northwest. Hold on to your seats!