Minimally Exceptional

I recently switched hosting services. Previously, I was using Hasweb, which when I signed up with them four or so years ago, they were a great deal. If I pay for a year in advance, I get 5GB of storage and 100GB of transfer for about eight bucks a month.

I wanted to be able to upload and make available for download the concert recordings and DVDs that Laura and I have put together – I want to distribute them, but my upload is capped at a low enough speed that seeding through bittorrent isn’t feasable. Obviously, HTTP access isn’t happening on 5gb of space.

I started looking for a new host a few weeks ago, and found HostMonster. Their plan looked great, had lots of storage, and tons a bandwidth all for a reasonable price. Sounded great, until I read the terms of service. No profanity, not offensive content.

Fuck, I guess that’s out.

Eventually my search lead me to Hostgator. Hostgator also had a great plan. I’m paying $15 a month for 200GB of storage and 2TB of bandwidth – more than enough for what I want to do. I signed up, changed name servers on my domain, and was up and running within a few days. Overall, the process was much less painless than I expected it to be. I was expecting flurries of emails to and from support desks and techies trying to move all of my stuff from host A to host B. This was much easier than the other web change I made, which was registering Laura’s domain at somethingferretrelated.com and changing the main domain associated with my hasweb account. That was a little more painful.

Anyway, after a few days of uploading, downloading, md5 checking, et cetera – the first set is available online. Info files aren’t there yet but they will be after this weekend.

In the downloads section there is now the Greg Howard 2005-07-15 DVD, the Tim Reynolds 2005-07-15 Early DVD, and the Tim Reynolds 2005-07-15 Late DVD. The Matt Nathanson / Graham Colton / Kyle Riabko show at the Gargoyle in 2004 will be going up next, as soon as the graham and kyle discs are ready. Yes, this is the ripped pants show.

So anyway, I’d like to think that’s a pretty significant improvement/addition to the site. There’s finally content available here other than my petty bitching and geeking out. Go nuts and download them if you want them – I’ll password lock the directories if/when I run out of bandwidth.

2006 seems like it came and went pretty quick. You probably aren’t asking and don’t care what I did all year; since that’s the case, I’ll ask for you and pretend that you do indeed care.

“So, what DID you do all year, if you didn’t spend it sitting in front of a computer, posting messages on the internet?”

Well that’s a good question, I’m glad you asked.

I started 2006 in a really horribly way – with a wicked hangover. New years eve was spent at Betsy’s bachelorette pad, and involved wayyy to much alcohol. I don’t even really remember what, other than 151 and some corn whiskey bottled as ‘moonshine.’

Here’s a little bit of a laundry list, I might elaborate on some of these later on:

-In late December 2005 I did finally get my promotion; that coupled with a nice year-end raise has made things a bit more financially comfortable

-I worked my ass off in January though April. It’s audit season in our office, and we were a person down, so I worked some late late nights and weekends. Seriously, I think that might be the only significant thing I did the first quarter of the year. I worked, and I slept.

-In April, I decided to start saving money to move out. Since I was still paying off credit cards from college, I set a very modest goal of having $3,000 saved up by year end. (Actual year end savings: $3,400)

-Switched banks for my savings money. Twice.

-Made my first ‘real’ live concert audio recording (Matt Nathanson at Streetside Records, 4/29/06 – get it here: http://www.archive.org/details/mn2006-04-29.instore

-Saw DMB twice in May: Saint Louis (which was both the tour opener, fantastic, and the return of JTR that I’d been waiting 5 years for), and Kansas City.

-Was in Charlie’s & Katie’s wedding in June. DVD of the wedding = not done.

-Was in Christine’s & Matt’s wedding in July. DVD of the wedding = not done.

-Saw DMB twice in August: Both in Ohio. Night one was meh, night two was really great (other than the walk to and from the parking lot) Government mule = great.

-Found out in August that things with Laura’s mom were much more serious than we had thought

-Bought Laura a camera she wanted/needed (the Canon EOS-30D) for her birthday / our anniversary.

-Saw Tim Reynolds in September (and recorded tape #2)

-Went to Maria’s wedding in September, where Laura did some wedding photography

-Saw Matt Nathanson and Carbon Leaf in October (and recorded audience tapes #3 and 4)

November and December seemed really busy, but in retrospect, all it seems like I did was work, goof around, and help take care of Laura while she was taking non-stop care of her family.

So, all in all, a shitty start and a shitty end to an otherwise alright year. In all fairness, February is just about here already, and 2007 hasn’t exactly started off ideally either, but at least there’s still time to make the eleven and a half months to come better.

just in case you like matt nathanson and missed my various posts on the matt boards, here’s a couple of videos worth checking out. neat shit always seems to happen at the matt shows i’m at.

from last year’s matt show (9.28.04):
lost myself – ripped pants (right click and save as)

and from this year’s matt show (10.30.05):
suspended – yelling douchebag (right click and save as)

make sure you watch that suspended video all the way to the end.

the matt shows were great. we’ve taped them for DVD authoring and hopefully will be able to get them out soon – the 9.28.04 is almost ready to go, and the 10.30.05 and 11.01.05 shouldn’t take much work. the hardest part of it will be figuring out what the openers played (we taped those too.)

that being said, if anyone happens to be a big fan of matt wertz, graham colton, kate earl, or kyle riabko, drop me a line.

let’s see, what else is going on…

oh yeah, it’s december, i guess it’s time for the christmas list!

i’ll put in as much as i can remember and edit in anything that i forget (keep in mind that this is a wish list and i won’t be able to get or afford all of this crap.)

U2 – Live in Chicago DVD
DMB – Weekend on the Rocks box set
Santana – All that I am (or whatever the new cd is called)
Pink Floyd – Pulse DVD
Traffic – Gold (2 disc collection)
Knights of the Old Republic II – PC
Fable the Lost Chapters – PC
Doom III – PC
new DVD burner
new/upgraded mics for audio recording (my mic is crap right now)
external firewire hard drive controller
1GB SD memory card (for an MP3 player)
Dragon Quest VIII – PS2
Soul Caliber 3 – PS2
Nintendo Gamecube (used or otherwise)
Super Smash Bros. and Zelda – Windwaker for said gamecube

that’s all i can think of. i don’t expect to get all (or even most) of this, it’s a wish list.

i’m also interested in a few other things, but i don’t know if they will be out in time for christmas.

Final Fantasy 4 – GBA (if it’s out in time)
Kingdom Hearts 2 (oh yeah that’s right it got the square soft BIG GAME DELAY!)
Final Fantasy – Advent Children (I preordered this – when the hell does it come out?!? seems like it’s been delayed a couple times now…)
Final Fantasy XII (another big game delay from square)
Matt Nathanson – Live at the Point
Matt Nathanson – the New album
Legend of Zelda – Twilight Princess
Xenosaga III (still REALLY far away, but it’s a great story and i’m anxious to see how they tie it up)

[geek]
seriously, the gamecube is just for the zelda games. nintendo has done a really good job of keeping classic old game franchises going and i haven’t had a chance to check any of them out. it’s a good time to like video games, but it’s also an expensive time, given the xbox 360 is now out and the PS3 will hit shelves in the spring. If the nintendo revolution can do all the shit they claim it will, it will be a must as well.

expensivo.

oh yeah – i’m thinking about buying a used or refurbished xbox. not because i want to play games on it or anything, but because i want to try turning it into a fully functional PC. it has everything you need – network connections, sound and video, a hard drive, USB for inputs, a CD/DVD drive… they say all you need is a certain game (i dont remember what) and some kind of hardware piece and you can install an operating system and all kinds of shit. i want to try it just to see if it works. seems like it would be a pretty convenient thing – an xbox sized pc you could hook up to a TV.

[/geek]

[major geek]

oh, and whats up with star wars? are they putting a complete sage 6 movie boxed set together or what? pack that thing with all kinds of extras and unreleased footages, slap a $100 price tag on it, and let’s get the ball rolling here. i want to buy the third movie, but i’m not just because i know a boxed saga set HAS to be right around the corner… doesn’t it? maybe i’ll rent revenge of the sith to check out the extras just to hold me over.

maybe they could charge $150 and include some kind of crazy replica light saber or something.

[/major geek]

so, any of you audiophiles know anything about microphones and field recording? or perhaps mastering/remastering crappy audio with something like soundforge?

why, you ask?

the australia tour starts next week. that’s cool, hopefully we’ll get some new material and decent recordings there.

north america tour dates are out, and i’m about to put in ticket requests for st. louis and deer creek (sorry, no gorge this year – too expensive – and unfortunately, i think i have a schedule conflict with sandstone this year).

‘in the studio’ video clips are available at the new album website

the album is out in may, and the few people priviliged enough to hear it have all spoken very highly of it. i’m expecting great things.

live trax vol. 3 is out in a week or two.

all in all? it’s a good time to be a fan. it’s times like these that remind me why i love this band.

also, the release of the 3.14.99 dvd is also here, as i will start taking b&p requests for it tonight. this dvd is great, especially if you’re a bigger fan of dave and tim than of the dmb. there’s some iffy camera work at points, and the video looks about like you’d expect 6 year old vhs tapes to look, but the audio is smokin and the video looks, overall, great.

next on the dvd menu? kyle riabco/graham colton/matt nathanson 09.28.04, which all in all will probably be 4 discs, assuming i can score a copy of decent audio and laura can fix some of the video glare issues. 1 kyle disc, 1 graham disc, 2 matt discs. was a good show, hopefully it turns out okay.

oh, and the audience video of dmb 04.26.02 is supposed to be going public pretty soon. that’s be nice – there’s not nearly enough video out there of shows that i attended.

want a b&p or trade of the 3.14.99 show? check back tonight or tomorrow for instructions.