Music

The Music Blog of the Infonistacrat!

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A DELAYED DOSE OF JACK UP MUSIC FOR YOU ALL

Check it out…I wanted to get this posted yesterday, and have something else completely cool for you all today, but the events of the past three days have kind of kicked my ass. More on that in a bit, because I REALLY need to vent. So, if you’re not interested in some severe ranting on my part over my job, I would read this paragraph and skip to the tunes. Like I said, I originally had this lined up for yesterday, but music never dies, and it never gets old, so one day won’t really matter, I don’t think. I have some more tunes based on the Jack FM format…I am seriously loving the freshness of it. At least for now, it’s keeping me sane for 20 minutes in the morning, and 20 at night.

Now on to my rant. Work of getting kind of completely out of hand, and today I’m pretty much going to put a stop to that today. It’s become apparent that the project managers in my company are content to allow me to take over the effective management of all areas of their projects, including resource management, ordering, priority setting, etc. I am an architect. My role is to provide a sound technical solution, and a map for them to integrate complex applications across the board. Instead, I have been doing so much project manager crap that I’m behind. Way behind. And I just had a come to Jesus meeting where I laid it all out, and told my lead PM that either he gets a team here tomorrow, or I go home.

So, hold on…I have to be in Boulder for yet a third week in a row, and the second weekend. No, my wife is not happy, and no, I am seriously not happy.

IT CAME FROM THE 90′S, UPDATE EDITION!

Today’s list is my update of one of my favorite blog series called “It Came From The Nineties” over at Can You See The Sunset On The South Side. The author of this blog, which, by the way, if one of my favorite reads, has a pretty good eye for talent, and usually posts outstanding stuff. A month ago, I did a 3 day series on what I thought was the best of…if you get a chance, I still recommend going over and visiting his blog.

Of today’s list, maybe the song that means the most to me is The Nixons’ Sister. It was a moderate hit in 1995, but the words really hit me pretty hard. In 1995, the relationship I was in had fallen apart, due to the distance between us…I was in Chicago, and she was in California. We were both going through pretty nasty divorces, and though we loved each other pretty dearly, the stress just tore us apart, and we went months without speaking to each other. I heard this song, and the words just kind of shot through me, and I realized that I was making a mistake I would never recover from by letter her go. I mailed her a copy of the song, and fortunately, she felt the same way. A few months later, with both our divorces complete, she moved to Chicago. A year later, we were married, and this December, it will be 12 great years. Never has a song made such a difference in my life.

I DON’T KNOW JACK ABOUT MUSIC…OR DO I?

One of the nice things about traveling for business is that I sometimes find some great music stations on the radio. It’s rare, but when I find one, I get pretty jazzed. Well, my friends (as John McCain is so fond of saying), this week, I have found one, though it has a little twist, as you’ll see. First of all there is a Denver Station that calls itself Jack FM, and I gotta admit, they play one hell of a variety of songs. Not every song is great, or even a song I like. But unlike most stations, I can listen to 3 or 4 songs I really enjoy for everyone I don’t. Normal stations are lucky to have the reverse ratio.

Now for the controversy. I guess that Jack FM is a new type of format, or so says Wikipedia (who we all know is NEVER wrong!). The playlist creation is centralized, and market research driven. Their catalog of songs are, I guess, twice as large as other stations, and they are no where near as specific to one genre of music. Honestly, I find none of those things disturbing, and in fact, it’s a nice change. The stations (and there are several across the US, Canada, and now even in the UK), have no local programming. No DJ. No local voice to add that local touch. I guess that upsets people. To be honest, though, there are very few DJ’s I honestly care to listen to. The last one passed away a few years back (I hope your jamming your ass off up there, John Peel!). It’s all about the music…the other stuff is just fluff.

That brings me to today’s list. All the songs on the list are from a 2 hour period. Of course, I choose the ones I liked the most, and left off the clunkers like Neil Diamond and Kool and the Gang (apologies to those that like those two artists…I have nothing again em. Hell, I even dig the hell out of Neil once in a while.). But the stuff listed here is pretty typical of the range of styles, both in genre and in decades, that they play around the clock. Like I said, it works for me, and makes that drive to and from work a little more bearable. Enjoy!

MUSIC FROM THOSE CHEESY 80′S MOVIES

There’s nothing I like better than all those old cheesy movies from the 80’s. I’m pretty sure you know, and have seen, all of them, just like me. Pretty In Pink, 16 Candles, Fast Times, Valley Girl, Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire, etc. etc. The list is endless. No, I’m not ashamed to say I went to see them…I mean, mostly, because my girlfriend/wife at the time wanted to see them…yeah, that’s gotta be it! Anyway, no matter how bad those movies were, you could always count on one thing, a great soundtrack. And by great, I mean, they invented, and perfected the modern movie soundtrack. Since the 80’s (with some exception of some of the Cameron Crowe movies in the 90’s), movie sound tracks have tried to be that cool, with very few successes. It was just the greatest 10 year span ever to be in my late teens / early 20’s. I love watching those movies now because it really does remind me that at one time, I could flit about the halls at high school, being an outsider, scorning the “in” crowd, and generally not giving a shit about anything. Maybe the reason I still listen to the music I do is because for 4 minutes at a time, I can still be like that.

The real reason I used to watch those movies, to be honest, is that, among my other crushes in the 80’s, Molly Ringwold just rocked my world. I thought she played some of the coolest characters back then, and it’s a shame her career died when she pissed of John Hughes. I don’t know where she is now, or what she’s doing, but for me, she’s just one of the coolest chicks from one of greatest times of my life. Here’s to you, Molly! Enjoy!

SONGS YOU MIGHT NOT EXPECT ME TO LIKE!

Alright, as the title suggests, this post is made of songs that, having read my blog and seen my tastes in music, you might be surprised to find I like. Crazy as it may seem, everything here, at one time or another, was a song I really liked a lot. Some because they remind me of special places, people and things in my life. Some, just because I like the songs. So, you can see what I listen to when I don’t listen to my normal playlists.

Now, as far as what I have been up to this week. As a profession, I’m an infrastructure architect, which means I design and build the environments that companies run their IT systems on. The infrastructure I build is a lot more complex that normal environments…in fact, this one I am here to build now is extremly complex. I have an older mainframe, a 3745 front end process, which I have to integrate with an HP Tandem, and several start of the art Power 6 AIX servers. Add on the storage systems, the tape systems for back up and recovery. Plus, I am building a pretty world class VMWare environment, complete with a separate VMotion infrastructure. Simply put, I have about 10 million dollars in cutting edge servers I am building and integrating. Well, i don’t do the work…I am the lead architect for the project.

So, this week, I’m here to make sure that everything gets put in the proper racks, all my cables get run like I designed it, as well as all mir fiber optics. Long story short, I am slowly going insane, managing things to a detail that kinda freaks me out a little bit. Complicating things even more is that I originally had 5 weeks to build and test everything…but the customer changed their minds, and decided that two works would be more than enough time, and the powers to be agreed. So here I sit, busting my ass for 2 weeks, working 16 - 18 hour days. And believe it or not, we are going to be very close to getting it all done! Go figure. So enjoy the tunes…and if I miss another post, please know that it’s because I am slowly going insane! Enjoy!

SMALL UPDATE FOR WEDNESDAY, SEPT 24TH

OK, so this week has been one hell of a lot busier than I thought it would be, thus the second day of no updates. However, I will be making an update tonight, no matter what happens, so expect some new tunes tomorrow, as well as some details on what’s going on in my life this week. Cheers!

TWO FOR THE PRICE OF NONE MONDAY!

I’ve made it to Boulder, where I’ll be living for the next few weeks. And as it always seems to be the case now days, the trip was maddeningly crazy. I fly out of the Flint, MI, regional airport, which means I always need to connect somewhere. Today, that somewhere was in Chicago. The flight to Chicago was scheduled to take off at noon. At 3 minutes til noon, the plane was still not at the gate, and in fact, I knew from the status board it was still in the air. So, I called American Airlines. See, I only had 45 minutes between flights in Chicago, and since I knew we would probably be taking off 30 - 40 minutes late, I wanted to see what other flights were available the next day.

Now, here is a dirty little secrets that the airlines never really share, but if you travel a lot on business, it’s invaluable. The airlines can double book you on two flights, so that if you miss one, you have a seat on the other. As soon as you realize there is going to be trouble, call the airlines, and get them to book, before it’s too late. Trust me, the rebooking line is for people who don’t have a clue how to travel. So, yesterday, I called, and the guy booked me on a later flight. But here’s the kicker…the flight was full, except for first class! I’m pretty sure you can see where this is going. I got in to Chicago, rushed to my gate, only to find, like I anticipated, that I was 5 minutes too late. The harried gate agent was busy closing the flight out (what ever THAT means), and kind of brushed me aside, and told me to go to the rebooking line. Like I said, that line is for suckers.

I politely told here that I had already been rebook on the 3:40 flight. That changed her tone a little, and she asked me to wait, and she would help me. Second secret. Treat these people like humans, and they will do everything in their power to help you. After all, they are just trying to do their job, and it’s not their fault that the airlines suck now days. So, when she was finished, I smiled, asked her how the day was going, and listened for a minute while she vented a little. When she was done, she typed in my info, and out came a first class ticket…even though she could have given me a gate pass to get a seat as one came available, probably in the back of the aircraft. Trust me, first class is a LOT better than coach.

So, here I am, and here I will be for the next two weeks. I’m going to do my best to post every day while I’m here, but if I don’t, just know that it’s because I’m working, and hit a busy day. Either that, or I spent too much time at the Left Hand Brewery! Enjoy.

MO’ MONEY, MO’ MONEY, MO

I watching Wall Street gradually melt into a big pile of goo the other day, wondering how much of my 401K actually exists anymore, which led me to wonder what it will be like to still be working at the age of 80. Hey, how bad an it be? Except for the fact I’ll need to take more naps, and change my adult diaper during breaks, it might be so bad. But watching all that chaos unfold just kind of reminded me of one thing…In Living Color! I’m pretty sure most people know it as the shows that launched the Wyans and that other douche, Jim Carey. And it launched the phrase “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Money, Mo’ Money!”

I thought it might be a hoot to come up with a list of songs with Money in the title, as a tribute to the innate greed of the average Wall Street CEO. I hope you enjoy the music…it’s about all I can afford to give out anymore!

A MUSICAL TRIBUTE TO MR. SOCKS

I mentioned a few days ago that a stray cat had come to live on our back deck. We informally named him Mr. Socks. That him there in the picture. The rains of the past few days, along with the coming of fall, and eventually winter, spurred us on to take him to the vet this morning, to get him checked up, immunized and try to get him ready for winter.

My wife took him into the vets office this morning. An hour later, I got a call from her, and on the other end, I heard only sobbing. The vet had done a feline HIV test on the little guy, and the test came back positive. Further more, the vet said he was already pretty sick, and could not survive a winter. Unfortunately, it was time to make a very rough decision. Mr. Socks has been living on the back deck for two months now, and we honestly have grown extremly fond of the little guy. But this morning, we made the decision to put him at rest. It was hard, and it sucks, and it’s left a little bit of a hole in our home, but we just could not stand to watch the poor guy suffer, and gradually pass away. So it’s with more than a little sadness that today, we said goodbye to our little friend, Mr. Socks.

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