Screwed by Design

It’s always refreshing to see a webhost who knows what to do with an obsolete server.

Heck, it’s refreshing to see a webhost that knows what to do period. Having switched from 1&1 to Site5 after going through bad-RAM-host-denial hell, I couldn’t be more satisfied with them. They’re even got a nice flock of Firefox users to boot! What more could you ask for?

The lake’s almost thawed and the highs for the next few weeks aren’t supposed to drop below 50F degees! Looks like Spring is on its way!

30min before Joel hit the stage. By the time he did, not a single empty seat could be found.

I just got back from the Verizon Center where Billy Joel just played an awesome concert. As you can probably tell from the above picture, I had great seats! My mother and I were literally 20ft. or so from the stage. The tickets (bought through eBay) were a real pain to get since Paypal ended up charging twice for them causing my bank to charge me $50 bucks in overdraft fees. Luckily I managed to get the second charge refunded and somehow even managed to have my bank return the $50. While incredibly inconvenient, the hassle was totally worth it to get seats as close as they were.

Joel playing Don’t Ask Me Why.

The show itself was great. Even at 56, Joel still knows how to please an audience. Playing a setlist that included some of his lesser known songs as well as the bigger hits.

• Prelude/Angry Young Man
• My Life
• Everybody Loves You Now
• The Entertainer
• New York State Of Mind
• The Downeaster ‘Alexa’
• Zanzibar
• Allentown
• Don’t Ask Me Why
• Pressure
• Goodnight Saigon
• Movin’ Out
• An Innocent Man

• She’s Always A Woman
• Captain Jack
• Keeping The Faith
• I Go To Extremes
• The River Of Dreams
• Highway To Hell
• We Didn’t Start The Fire
• Big Shot
• It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me
• You May Be Right
• Only The Good Die Young
• Scenes From An Italian Restaurant
• Piano Man

Introducing Pressure prior to running to another keyboard on the right side of the stage.

One thing that really surprised me about this concert was the massive number of younger faces in the crowd. Of course the middle-aged to older group you’d expect to be there were, but the younger folks seemed to have more of a presence at this concert. It really shows that in times of crappy music, people will go off looking for alternatives. It also speaks for how timeless Joel’s music is considering his first hit came out in ‘71.
I really had a great time and given a chance, would buy another ticket or two to another of his upcoming shows.

This winter has been fairly moderate in terms of weather with little snow and temperatures hitting 50°F on Monday. That was until we got hit by a blizzard on Thursday which brought with it 15in of snow and plunging temperatures. This is what I was greeted with this morning:

I think I’ll be staying inside until spring….

The ChuckBot module for Mozbot mentioned in my last entry is now available for download. Chuckify your IRC channel today!

After my floor took on a Chuck Norris theme* (second and third went with Sean Connery and Katherine Hepburn respectively) I decided that Moznet could stand a little Chuckifying, so I wrote up a module for Mozbot and set it loose in a few channels. Of course you can only have so much greatness on one network, so he’s now restricted to #chuckbot (/msg ChuckNorris help for commands). Even through his time outside of his new sandbox was short, it was long enough to start a Chuck buzz. If you’re brave enough to submit a bug on it, chuck.diff awaits.

*pictures soon!