Looks like Dave registered himself a domain. I present to you… klegmania.org. Oh. Ah, *ahem*, mind the Fist of Death there… Yeah, that’s probably going to swell up something fierce. Should have mentioned the fist thing sooner, sorry. I’ll just get some ice for that.

When you’ve got as much free time as I seem to find myself with, you’ve got to come up with ways to fill it all. Like, for example, making themed mix cds. Here’s one I’ve been working on with a fairly obvious theme to it.

The only problem is September; I can’t find a single song with September in the title in my entire collection. Its kind of annoying. Can anyone recommend one for me? This is your chance to prove your musical knowledgitude once and for all by reaching deep into the recesses of music trivia stored in your brain and pulling out the perfect September song for me. Not that you’ve got anything to prove. But lets just say that if you did have a music trivia related chip on your shoulder, well, opportunities like this don’t come along every day. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

After watching The Prisoner, a Jackie Chan film, I feel slightly dizzy and disoriented. The film obviously comes from the school of thought that believes if you toss enough random things into a film a coherent plot will eventually emerge. This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it. You just can’t really judge a film like this by the same standards that you would something like say, The Royal Tenenbaums, that’s all. It tried to balance about 4 different story arcs, and rather than try to deftly interweave them as your conventional run-of-the-mill film might, this film boldy chose to just randomly slosh them together until something resembling a conclusion resulted. Namely, a huge gun battle against half of the army of the Philippines on a military airstrip. How did Chinese prison inmates end up in a gun battle on an airstrip in the Philippines? I couldn’t even begin to explain.

I just got my Cornerstone photos developed, and ended up with a few decent shots in spite of only having a disposable camera. About half of the roll went to both of the Havalina shows (like the image above), but the pictures I did get made me wish that I had a video camera there. Every time I see them play it always puts a big dumb grin on my face, especially watching Orlando, the bass player. He’s one of the craziest bassists I’ve ever seen and I mean that in the best way possible. If I ever tried to pull even half of the stuff he does on stage I’d wind up flat on my face and completely lost. During the end of their second show he managed to break one of the tuning heads off of his electric bass in the process of flinging himself to the ground and bouncing back up several times. Needless to say, I was impressed.

…and we’re back. It’s been quite a week for me and it feels good to finally be back at home and relaxing. I left on the 27th of last month planning on being gone for 3 days and instead ended up coming back 9 days later. The original plan was to meet some of my mom’s side of the family in Indiana and then return Saturday. Instead, I got completely sidetracked and ended up spending last week at the Cornerstone music festival in Bushnell Illinois with 3 of my cousins. They had enough extra room for me, and I didn’t really have anything I needed to do that week so I decided to go get me some rock and roll. The festival ran Tuesday through Saturday but we got there Sunday evening and had an extra day of camping. Speaking of camping, it was pretty rough going the week with the clothes I’d brought just for the weekend, but I survived and it was worth it for all the rock. I do have a new found appreciation for the little things like air conditioning, indoor plumbing, and electrical outlets. The whole week went by without any rain or even many clouds in the sky so it was like an oven out there. I got to see Starflyer 59, who I’d been dying to see for almost 5 years, the always amazing Havalina, and the indescribably wonderful Danielson Famile. Then there were 3 bands (Poor Old Lu, Luxury, Roadside Monument) I thought I’d never get a chance to see due to breakups that had reformed. Just those bands alone would have made it worth it for me but I got to check out a ton of others as well, some of which were pretty good. Out of about 250 bands there I probably saw about 25. There definitely weren’t as many bands there that I was interested in as when I went 4 years ago, but it was still really great to be there. Even though I tried to budget my spending, I ended up spending 3 times as much on cds as I told myself I would. Whoops. All I had for picture taking was one disposable camera, but hopefully I got some pretty good shots. The photo at the top of the page features from right to left, myself, my cousin Caleb, and an unknown large sweaty man. It was taken in the Cornerstone general store where we often exchanged money for wonderful bags of ice. It was found online here, from where I promptly stole it. So anyway, I’m back and recovering from a massive dose of rock (and rashes and blisters). I’m getting too old for this.

Man, I’ve got this whole unemployment thing down and it didn’t even take me a week. I’m so good at it I should put it on my resume and make a point to mention it at interviews. “Yes, I could do an excellent job working for your company, but I’d also be very good at not working for you. You win either way.” It goes something like this: wake up around 11, eat giant bowl of rice krispies, play Neverwinter Nights and/or Warcraft3, ignore nagging self doubt and sense of impending doom, remind myself that I’m looking for a job, briefly browse online job sites and find nothing promising, roommates arrive home from work, play Neverwinter Nights and/or Warcraft3 with roommates, sleep. With a packed schedule like this, its easy to see why I haven’t been posting here as often.

Since I have yet to hear back from CoreComm about finishing up my interview, I’m going to assume that they’re trying to give me a hint here. However, being notoriously bad at taking hints I still plan on giving them a call Monday just to see if I’m still in consideration or not. It’d be really nice to find out that I still have a chance, especially since I’m now in the last 5 hours of my employment at the Student Computer Centers. I can’t believe I’ve worked here four years, but since this is the best paying job I’ve ever found for doing nothing I shouldn’t be too surprised that I stuck around this long.

I saw Minority Report last night, and really enjoyed it. I’d say its easily the best Philip K. Dick adaptation since Blade Runner. Of course, that may be a given considering that competitors for that title are films like Impostor and Total Recall. At any rate, I thought the film was at its most intersting when it was dealing with the paradox of knowing the future vs. changing the future. Predesitination vs free will. Now there’s a good fun Philip K. Dickian subject. Unfortunately, just when it was getting good it kind of skirted the issue and turned into a straightforward murder mystery. Even so, I can’t really complain and I still think it did justice to the source.

The job interview yesterday was somewhat disappointing. The manager of the position I was applying for, who was supposed to be one of the people interviewing me, got caught in a meeting and was too busy to make it. I found this out from an HR person immediately after I arrived. Instead, they handed my resume off to a couple of members of the software team and had them interview me on short notice. I think it went alright, but since neither of them really knew exactly what the position I was applying for required it didn’t seem to get that much accomplished. I’m supposed to get a call from the manager later this week and either do a phone interview or come back in again.

I finally got a job interview, after going for about 3 months without even one. Its with CoreComm, a mid-sized telephone and internet service provider, and its this upcoming Monday. The odd thing is that I never even sent them a resume, they came across my information through the Ohio State Engineering Career Services department. This after months of sending out my resume over and over again with no results. I’m not complaining though. Finally, some good news at the end of a week that’s seen me sick all week and Bobbins cancelled.

Last night I made my way down to Springfest on the lawn of the Ohio Union, and tried to pretend like I was still a college student. I hadn’t been to one in a few years, and I really wanted to see Cannibal Ox. The whole thing was free, and I guess I got my money’s worth since I felt just about adequately rocked. I got there in time to see Milemarker, who I’d heard were pretty good. They seemed to do it for most of the indie kids there, but I just wasn’t really that into it. Everything was running about an hour behind, so by the time that Cannibal Ox finally got on stage, it was after 1:00 am. It was then that I came to the realization that even though I may really like the artist, live hip-hop just doesn’t do that much for me. Yeah, their dj was really good, and maybe it was just because I was pretty tired, but I just wasn’t getting it and ended up calling it a night about halfway through their set.