Back in the Saddle

Thursday. Ok, sorry everyone for the lack of posts this week. The whole family except me was sick in the first half of the week, so I took off work to run the infirmary ward. Then on Wednesday I was back at work but super busy trying to catch up on the work I missed. On top of that my parents came into town last night, so there has been a lot going on at darthjohn42's Death Star lately. Today I listened to the Beastie Boys on the way in. It seemed like the right selection this morning to (hopefully) kick off a good day. Yesterday I listened to Built to Spill and Soul Coughing. Mike Doughty, the former lead singer of Soul Coughing, has a new solo album out. I have heard a cut from it on the radio and I am anxious to hear more. If anyone has heard this album, please feel free to share your thoughts.

Short post

Monday. Short post today. My daughter is sick so I left work to be with her. I did drive to the office this morning, though. I listened to some live Modest Mouse music. It was pretty good, but I had a lot of trouble trying to get the whole band in the backseat of my little car.

Twitching for the Weekend

Friday. No complaints about that. I got an ok night's sleep last night, but I can really use the weekend to catch up on all of the sleep I lost this week when I was up late doing school work. I woke up with this weird twitching on the bottom of my foot, though, like some kind of muscle spasm or something. That would be annoying enough, but because my feet are super sensitive every time it twitches it sends a crazy ticklish sensation across the bottom of my foot. It has been doing this straight for at least 5 hours now and I really wish it would stop. It made it really difficult to drive in this morning since it is my right foot giving me the problem. I tried looking up online about it, but all it said was that muscle twitches are usually a sign of stress. Um... I finished my term papers Wednesday night. Stress is over dude. I don't know what the deal is. Very strange.

Music for the drive in: The Mars Volta. Someone at Mrs. darthjohn42's work let her borrow three CD's for her to listen to and try out. So, coincidently the songs from those three albums appeared on my iPod and I was checking out the first one today. I had heard of The Mars Volta before since I guess they are one of the new hot groups that all of the hip kids are listening to nowadays. They were, um... different. I didn't get an immediate attraction to their music, but I wouldn't say they were bad. They had a lot of electronica sounds in their music and had kind of a Goth feel. However, instead of an annoying whiny voice or a super deep depressing voice like most Goth bands, this group had a guy that reminded me of Rodney James Dio. I kept picturing the lead singer as a guy in tight red leather pants, a billowy shirt, long permed '80's hair and a bandana every time he shrieked a vocal. I highly doubt that was the vision they were trying to express with their music. But, hey, that's just my initial impression. I am sure you can find samples of them on the internet if you want to hear it for yourself.

I have never heard of the other two groups. I looked up one on the internet and many of the reviews compared them to Radiohead. Now I know everyone loves Radiohead, but I can't stand them. They are one of the few groups that I would rather crash my car trying to turn the radio station then have my ears bleed from hearing too much of one of their songs. So, I am not holding out much hope for liking that one but it will get its fair shot. I'll keep you posted.

Apparently the owner of these CD's must be into Goth music or something. I am going to have to ask Mrs. darthjohn42 if she happens to wear white face makeup and black lipstick. Do they have a "no-spiked dog collar policy" at her work? Not that there is anything wrong with being Goth, it just helps to know in general where a person is coming from in order to understand their appreciation in music. For example if someone is really into self-abuse, it can explain a lot why they listen to Jackyl...


Disclaimer: darthjohn42 once saw Jackyl in concert. To his defense they were just the opening band. Yes, they did play the chainsaw on stage.

My Opinion on Someone Else's Opinion

Thursday. Sorry for the missed post yesterday but I had a big paper due last night and I used every free chance I got to work on it. The paper didn't turn out that well, but it is done so I guess that's something. This past week has been pretty rough sleep-wise, but I now get about two weeks off before the next quarter starts so hopefully I can catch up. But today I have to sleepwalk in a brain dead haze so hopefully since I actually have stuff to do today I can manage to hang on to consciousness (or some semblance thereof).

Today's musical selection was The Shins. They are very mellow and melodic (mellowdic?). If you have seen the movie Garden State then you heard them. They were featured in the soundtrack. I thought that movie was pretty good. I've liked Natalie Portman since she was in The Professional. That sounds kind of creepy, doesn't it? Let's move on.

Yesterday's music selection was Pavement Slanted and Enchanted. Spin magazine recently named this album as one of the most relevant albums in the past 20 years. Have you seen this list? I have many issues with it, but hey, this is the same magazine a few years back that claimed The Ramones were the most influential band of all time. Don't get me wrong, I love the Ramones. But more influential than the Beatles? Elvis? The Rolling Stones? Led Zeppelin? Jimi Hendrix? I wonder who is making these lists. Of course, this is just person's (or group of people's) opinion so it has to be taken with a grain of salt. Who am I to bash opinion making? I am posting my own opinion as we speak for Pete's sake.

By the way, my opinion is that Pavement's Brighten the Corners is a better album than Slanted and Enchanted. So there.

Only 24 Hours in a Day and Only 12 Notes a Man Can Play

Tuesday. Today is supposed to be the longest day of the year. I am going to bet it will still be 24 hours, though. Which makes me wonder, isn't the longest day of the year the day we move the clocks back? I mean, technically that day has 25 hours in it since you repeat an hour. Or does the repeated hour cancel out the first one? Does that mean that whatever you did during that hour didn't really happen? I bet that gets really confusing during police investigations. Where were you at 2:14 am last Sunday night? I don't know, which 2:14 do you mean? I wonder if that holds up in court. Your honor, there is no way my client could have committed that crime at 2:14am. At 2:14 he was an hour away from the scene of the crime...

Usually right after lunch every day seems like the longest day to me, but that is a different topic I think.

Today's musical selection: Beastie Boys To the 5 Boroughs. This is their latest album. It is good, but it is no Paul's Boutique. At first I thought it was To the 5 Burros, which made me wonder why they were singing to a group of donkeys. Then I thought it was to the 5 Bureaus, and I thought they were singing to some government agencies or something. By the way, it’s not “burrows,” either, so they weren’t giving props to the homes of a gopher community. I guess it’s a salute to NYC or something and they are from there, I guess. Funny, I never picked that up from any of their other albums.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Monday. Nothing planned today for work, which may be a good thing because I am super brain dead right now. It is the end of a school quarter for me so I was up late last night writing a 20-page paper on business ethics. Fun times. It's not that good, but it's done at least. After that I couldn't get to sleep because I guess my brain was too worked up or something. Even after I finally fell asleep I tossed and turned all night. I have ingested high levels of caffeine this morning so I am counting on that to get me through to the end of the day. Since I have another 20-page paper due on project management I guess I can just expect the whole process to repeat itself.

Music selection for the drive in: Modest Mouse's The Fruit that Ate Itself and part of Interstate 8. Over the weekend I was able to secure the remaining selections I previously did not have of the MM discography, so I was eager to listen to even more MM. I really liked what I heard, especially a tune titled Edit Out the Sad Parts. The lyrics are either genius or equivalent to a 13-year old Goth girl's bad poetry. I guess it depends on your point of view.

I just noticed that there are only three points of view: one at the bottom of the "V" and two at the bottom of the "W."

You see this is what happens when I am deprived of sleep. Better stop now.

iPod and Doughnuts

Friday. Yeah! Fridays aren't that bad for me. I have to run a report that lists all of the items that have dropped off the receivables website between last week and yesterday's upload. I know, that sounds like pure excitement, doesn't it? I also took a couple of hours off this morning to attend a Father's Day doughnut breakfast at my daughters' daycare. That was pretty cool, too. I enjoy doing these kinds of things with them, and of course I'm a sucker for free doughnuts.

Today's music selection for the drive in to work: Built to Spill. I like these guys. I had heard of them for a while but never heard their music until I gave them a shot after seeing them on a recommended list for fans of Modest Mouse. They are different from Modest Mouse for sure, but I can see the correlation. The recommended album was Keep It Like A Secret (which I listened to today), but I prefer (at least for now) Ancient Melodies of the Future. I also have Perfect From Now On, which is pretty good as well.

I was listening to Built to Spill because first I like them (see above) but secondly because I have been experiencing a problem with my iPod skipping tracks lately (see previous posts). This has been occurring with this Built to Spill album along with several others. I found a suggestion on the internet to resolve this issue and I gave it a shot. According to this advice, these tracks are in a format not recognized by the iPod even though they play fine in iTunes. To correct this problem highlight the tracks in iTunes that are giving you problems, go to the Advanced menu on the top and select "convert to ACC." iTunes will create new tracks under this format (so two will show up in your library or playlist) that should be compatible with your iPod. I experimented with this Built to Spill album and with a Death Cab for Cutie album that was also giving me trouble. The Built to Spill album played fine. I may be a little premature in saying that I have resolved this issue, so I will give you all the full update after I can verify that Death Cab for Cutie plays for me as well.

There is a warning to doing this, however. According to the instructions I found, the ACC format is a lesser quality than other musical file formats. However, since iTunes creates duplicate tracks you will still have the original files in case you need to burn CDs. Plus, I am currently playing my iPod through a radio transmitter anyway, so I am already experiencing a loss in sound quality already so I probably won't even notice. I have put in a procurement request for a car stereo with a built-in iPod interface, but so far I have been unable to convince Mrs. darthjohn42 that this is a budgetary necessity. I have been working on my Jedi mind tricks but the force is strong with this one...

On Being Super Awesome

Thursday. Today is website day, the most exciting day of my week. Today I get to compile all of the information I've collected over the past week, put it into one giant access database file and upload it into a receivables website utilized by our biggest customer. Awesome. It is just as mind-splittingly dull as everything else, but it is something new, the process's tendency to produce errors keeps me on my toes, and keeping busy makes the day go by relatively more quickly. Today's music selection for the drive in: Modest Mouse's Sad Sappy Sucker. I like this one. It's no Moon & Antarctica (see previous post "On Modest Mouse"), but I still like it all the same.

Every day as I come into work people ask "How's it going, darthjohn42?" I always reply with exuberance "Super awesome!" I have done this every morning without fail. This has resulted into an almost mocking joke, "you doing super awesome today, darthjohn42?" In which I always reply in the affirmative. Every once in awhile someone will ask me if I really am doing super awesome. I tell them I think people would rather hear me say something positive (even something as ridiculous as "super awesome") every morning than to provide them with an in-depth laundry list of all of my daily petty annoyances (that is what this blog is for). "How is your morning going, darthjohn42?" "Well, let me tell ya. I woke up late, cut myself shaving, spilled coffee on my pants, got stuck behind three traffic accidents on the way in and twisted my ankle on the stairs on the way up just to get to work on time so I can sit on my rear end for 8-9 hours today and stare at my computer slowly going near-sighted and insane from boredom all the while. But don't worry, I plan on getting a nasty paper cut around 10:00 so this all might change." After that, they pretty much agree that they would rather hear "super awesome."

My iPod

Wednesday. Music selection this morning: Built to Spill. These guys are pretty good. I think I may have a solution to my iPod problem. Apparently I am not the only one whose iPod skips tracks. Someone on the internet said they had a way to fix it (and I trust everything I read on the internet), so I am going to try it out and see. I hope it works because I have a whole Built to Spill album and several others that won't play.
Minor problems aside, I think that the iPod is probably the best invention since the commericalization of the internet. And there is a lot of competition out there including mobile phones, DVD players, and anything by Ron Popeil. I love my iPod. It is much easier than trying to carry several hundred CDs in your pocket, trust me. I ruined a lot of good pairs of pants that way.

Warning: Imposters Among Us!

Ok, as mentioned in the previous post I highly doubted anyone except a handful of friends were actually visiting this blog. So, I had contemplated requesting that my blog be added to the Google search engine (I wouldn't want to deny anyone of their voyeuristic pleasures...). However I came under the realization that this blog is hosted by a division of Google itself, so I wanted to know if the two went hand-in-hand already saving me the trouble.

To test this out, I put "darthjohn" into the Google search engine. This brought up several sites, yet none of them were mine. This was another darthjohn. Inconceivable! Be warned, this darthjohn is an imposter! I have used the moniker (or variations of, such as with the "42" attached) darthjohn for just under a decade now. I am darthjohn in yahoo, excite, my email, and this blog to name a few. Who is this other darthjohn? Unless I have been cloned on the planet Kamino like in Episode 2 without my knowledge, someone has hijacked my alias as his (or possibly her) own! So be forewarned faithful readers, there is only one true darthjohn and it is I. To the other darthjohns out there: I know there is nothing I can do to keep you from using the name that rightfully should be my own, but you should know that your karma will be forever out of balance until you desist. It's your choice.

By the way, if anyone knows anything about getting this blog on the Google search engine please comment below.

On Boredom

Tuesday. Spreadsheet day. You know you have a boring job when you look forward to the day you get to compile spreadsheets just because it breaks up the routine. Musical choice for the morning commute: Widespread Panic. Why the change up? Because I'm just crazy like that.

I first set up this blog back in January because I was bored. Then I shortly realized that I was boring and had nothing exciting to post. Several months passed until I came to a new perspective on this blog. I am going to use this as a cure for boredom. By posting entries, I will have something to do. However, that did not cure the problem of having only boring things to say. But, I have decided, as selfish as this sounds, that this blog is to cure my boredom, not the reader's. So, I can't promise exciting entries, so if you are looking for excitement try surfing excite.com instead. Of course, there are some who enjoy the voyeuristic pleasure of reading someone else's thoughts, and to you all I say welcome. Also welcome to friends of darthjohn42, whom are probably the only ones reading this anyway.

Ok, back to boredom. I had a roommate once who told me that only boring people get bored. I think he said that right before he went outside and played or did whatever he did while I sat on the couch watching Petticoat Junction re-runs. Just kidding, I agree with the fundamental base of this argument, however, I don't think it can be applied to a place of employment. Sure, I would love to just get up go outside and kick the hackeysack around or lead my co-workers in a rousing rendition of the Flintstones theme song whenever I got bored here at work, but I don't think that my employer would find this as a suitable use of my human capital.

You see I have a boring job. It's a good job and I'm thankful for it, but boring all the same. I'm just not challenged enough I guess. I tried working blindfolded, but that was a bit too challenging. I talked to my boss awhile back about this subject and for like two weeks I got considerably busier. However, when those projects were completed I fell back into the same boring daily routine. Part of the problem is that she is at headquarters 800 miles away, while I sit here and work independently in a branch office. I only see her about once a month, so I think I'm just not in her line of sight. When last we spoke she said that she was going to give me bigger assignment, but until then the boredom shall remain.

According to the boss lady, my meticulousness, patience and tolerance for monotony are my strengths (is that a compliment?) and are the reasons why she brought me on board for these particular projects I am currently working on. Little does she know that my brain is cracking and I am slowly going insane. However, there's a paycheck in it, it beats being a fry cook, and I have been advised that if I can hang on for another 12-18 months I am on track to make manager. So, here I am bored at work excited about the day I get to compile a spreadsheet and review 5,000-6,000 line items for accuracy. That's why I created this blog. To find out more about that, go back to the top and read through again. Rinse. Repeat.

On Modest Mouse

Monday. Another day of fun at work, which is why I guess that I'm posting to this blog. Music listened to on the way to work: Death Cab for Cutie. I checked them out since they were recommended if you liked bands such as Modest Mouse and Built to Spill. I can see the resemblance. I wasn't completely won over on the first listen, but the first five songs didn't play on my iPod so I couldn't get a full taste. This has happened before with other files. I must figure out the root of the problem before more annoyance occurs.

Lampside Briefcase asked what the deal was with Modest Mouse. I don't know. I just like them a lot. I first heard of MM when I was listening to the local college radio station and heard a song that I liked so much I pulled over and called the station to ask who it was. The DJ told me that the song was Cat Faces by Ugly Casanova. Apparently Ugly Casanova was a side project from Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse. At the time I had never heard of either band. I quickly requisitioned some Ugly Casanova to get a fuller perspective. Cat Faces remains as one of my favorite songs to this day, although I can't really explain why. Hotcha Girls is another good song.

Anyway, fast-forward a couple of years when an underground band named Modest Mouse broke onto the commercial airwaves with a single titled Float On. I liked the song and remembered the Ugly Casanova connection. Like many other bandwagoneers, I acquired the whole album (Good News for People Who Love Bad News) so I could hear more. I have heard warnings that MM can be an acquired taste, and I can certainly see that, but I was enamored immediately. The style is hard to pin down. Isaac's vocal style is definitely unique. An introspective melody can be quickly followed by outright screaming. Those who bought Good News expecting a pop album were probably disappointed.

Once I started really digging Good News I needed to hear more of MM right away. So very shortly after (like two days) I obtained another MM album The Moon & Antarctica. Reviewers had said that this one was better, and I have to admit I agree. Not to knock Good News, but I like this one more. I love the song Paper Thin Walls. Good stuff.

So, what is the deal? I don't know. I just dig 'em. Lyrically they're brilliant, and musically they're different. I have acquired several other MM albums and enjoy those as well, but I am sticking with Moon as my favorite at this point in time. But that, like everything else, is subject to change. Tomorrow I might be lauding the musical greatness of Rick Astley...

What am I currently listening to?

My boss (I have a review coming up), that muffled ringing in my left ear, my co-workers' private conversation behind me, the white noise of the office...

What's that? Oh, what music have I been listening to lately? Well, most recently it has been Built to Spill, The Shins, Pavement, Jurassic 5, and lots and lots of Modest Mouse.

Ok, I'm here.

Sorry, I've been asleep since that first post. Did I miss anything?