why not?

Bum rush the charts

tunes

I've been needing tunes, so I'm giving eMusic.com a shot. It's ten bucks a month for thirty (non-DRM) downloads. There is a free trial, and then the real deal starts up. There is some decent indie stuff on there, and a bunch of classical. I like the indie stuff, and I've been meaning to get into the classical (trying to class up the joint, don't you know), so it works for me. At least for now.

The biggest problem is that, since you are limited to thirty tracks, you end up (or I did) getting a partial album, since the credits don't roll over. Whatever. Thirty-three cents a track is a deal.

Downloads so far? Tom Waits, Taking Back Sunday, Flogging Molly, Demetri Martin, and four tracks from Thursday. Next month I'm getting some Wagner, and a couple more Thursday tracks.

Rolling Stone : Leaving Iraq: The Grim Truth

The article.

Interesting read.

time change

This time change has been great. The sun is out later, it's warm, it's gorgeous. For some reason, though, I have been exhausted at night. I'm going to sleep early tonight.

That was boring.

Ubuntu spreading

The French Parliament switches to Ubuntu | The Fridge

Ubuntu is a pretty good system. I've been using it at home, and though it isn't perfect, it'd be good for work for sure (browsing, email, open office applications). I'll put it this way, I'd use it.

shuffled smiles of spring

Nothing puts a smile on my face quite like hitting "shuffle all songs" on the iPod, and ending up with a playlist better than any I could have made myself.

Spring is the in the air, change is on the wind, and good tunes are in my ears. I am all smiles today.

old school posting

An actual post about my life now. Try not to fall asleep.

I had been thinking about trying out emusic for some tunes. I've been needing some new ones. I downloaded a few albums on The Pirate Bay, but I do want to support the artists (and legitimate sale of non-DRM'd tracks), so I decided to go legit if I I was going to actually buy the album, or if the artist was not so stinking rich for me to not care.

I'll go off on my soapbox of not needing to personally supporting record executives riding around in limos sometime later.

To make a long story short, I wasn't sure if I liked Tom Waits or not. I loved him in Coffee and Cigarettes, and I knew a song or two he had written, but I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I downloaded his new collection, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, & Bastards to give it a try.

Damn. It's good. Really good. So that convinced me to sign up for eMusic, to get the tracks legitimately.

Two things to take away from this:
1. The "illegal" download is the complete reason I expanded my horizons and bit and bought something I wasn't going to anyways.
2. Tom Waits is awesome, and not only for making Iggy Pop uncomfortable.

Now on to part 2:
One of my friends lost her hard drive, and subsequently her tunes. She sent out an email asking her friends to each burn two or three albums for her. I thought this idea was awesome: basically asking each of your friends for their own "desert island list", and actually getting it.

The three I sent:
1. The Get Up Kids - Something To Write Home About
2. Dashboard Confessional - A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar
3. Brian Setzer Orchestra - The Dirty Boogie

If I was on the desert island myself, the [last two on the] list would probably be different, but I figure that this would be a good mix to start a collection on, and they're all solid. You have to have some variety in there.

So here's the challenge: Give me your desert island list. And pretend you're on the island alone, so you're not embarrassed by the fact that you like Shakira. There's nothing wrong with that. She's pretty.

updates

I added a bunch of the links I had before. They're on the right. I thought I had backed up my old index page, but apparently I was wrong. If you're missing some links, let me know.

U.S. Military Budget

Military budget of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That's way to much.

million dollar strong