Andy's Blog

Chris' birthday

Chris Lattner's birthday was last weekend, and Tanya treat us all to a nice dinner, including a home-made cake:

Chris, so close to his face being on fire...

And everybody was super nice, in that we didn't roast Chris too badly for turning a year older (hey, it just happened to me last month). :)

-Andy.

So, do you think that this guy likes Diet Peach Snapple?

Another post from the wacky roommate file. Sabrina is going to be in the Bay Area for the next month (well, if you consider Davis to be in the Bay Area). This means that it was time for Kevin to clean out his collection of empty Snapple bottles:

At least 15 empty Snapple bottles. The upside-down on is en route to becoming empty.

I want to be very clear here -- this is the last the Snapple bottles. There was at least one haul of bottles to the recycling before this one, that I know of.

And this doesn't include any loose bottles in the car. And I haven't seen his office, so God knows what's going on there.

Kevin's only lament? That Snapple doesn't make a bigger size of the Diet Peach flavor, so that he could produce less empty bottles.

-Andy.

The car dilemma - finally solved

A few weeks ago, I brought my long and drawn-out car search to an end, by putting a deposit down on a new car. After a lot of soul-searching and wringing of hands over price and features vs. fuel economy - I decided not to buy a Prius. Instead, I went with the 2007 Volvo S40 T5:

The Volvo S40, in Passion Red

In the end, it came down to what I actually wanted to drive. And the Volvo not only is fun to drive, but it looks sharp, and it is reasonably environmentally friendly, for a non-hybrid car.

The only problem is that I went way over budget. Oh, and I'm so picky, that I had to have the car ordered from the factory (Belgium) in order to meet my needs. So, I won't have it until November. But I am so glad that the search is over, and I am looking forward to taking possession of my new machine.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Cars, Volvo S40, Prius

Massive Attack at the Greek Theatre, Berkeley, California

What an amazing year it has been so far for music. I've been to Coachella. I've seen Tool live three times! I've found a bunch of new amazing CDs (that I have yet to review, but will soon). And after not playing a single show in the United States for over 8 years, I have seen Massive Attack twice this year! They played in Berkeley California, at the Greek Theatre on Friday night, and Bill and I went up there to check it out:

I had never been up to the Greek before, and it is a pretty neat place to see a concert. It's open air, and every seat has a great view of the stage. Massive Attack managed to absolutely fill the arena with sound (I wonder if any of the earthquake sensors caught it?) as they vibrated the Greek by playing:

1. Live With Me
2. Risingson
3. Black Milk
4. Man Next Door
5. Butterfly Caught
6. Hymn Of The Big Wheel
7. Mezzanine
8. Teardrop
9. Angel
10. Futureproof
11. Safe From Harm
12. Inertia Creeps
13. Unfinished Sympathy
14. Group Four

Particular highlights for me were the first song - "Live With Me" and "Safe From Harm". "Live With Me" is Massive Attack's "new" song, and it appears on their greatest hits album, "Collected". It was written by Robert del Naja, and as such, continues with the more guitar-focused vibe of more recent Massive Attack songs. That being said, I really like this song, and am considering buying "Collected" just for it.

"Safe From Harm" was really one of the key songs for me, however, because I never-in-a-million years thought that I would hear Massive Attack play this song live. When they played it at Coachella, I was stunned. So, I was sortof expecting them to play it again tonight, and I wasn't disappointed. Not only do I really like this song, but it is one of the few off of Massive Attack's first album, "Blue Lines", that I still listen to. What is a amazing about how the band performs it now, is that the song has morphed into a treatise against Bush and the Iraq war.

All throughout the show, Massive Attack was displaying text and statistics on several LED-style video displays. In fact, before the band took the stage, they spent several minutes displaying fun facts about Berkeley (that the climate is considered to be Mediterranean, that 90% of the population voted for Kerry in 2004, about the Marijuana ordinance, etc.). During "Safe From Harm", Massive Attack's statisticians were at it again, but this time with statistics from the Iraq war.

I wish I had brought a better camera, because I would like to present some decent shots of what this was like (you can try Flickr for some decent in-concert photos, but I didn't see any that captured the text). It all made for an incredibly powerful experience - I have been thinking for awhile now that this Iraq stuff is a mess, but that really drove it home.

Along with Robert del Naja (3D), Massive Attack had Mr. Horace Andy, Deborah Miller, and Elizabeth Frazer on vocals:

If you squint, you can make out Elizabeth Frazer dressed in white.

While I'm not usually a big fan of the Horace Andy songs on the albums, he is great live. So is Deborah Miller - her strong voice made the best of "Safe From Harm", and really blew away "Unfinished Sympathy". Unfortunately, while Elizabeth Frazer's delicate voice makes for a great contrast on Mezzanine, she just gets blown away by the band live. I think they mic'd her up a bit more last night, which made for a better performance than Coachella, but it's unfortunate that her voice doesn't do as well in a live setting.

All in all, it was an amazing show. Massive Attack is (to quote Patrick) insane live - at any given time, they had at least two drummers, a guitarist, a bassist, someone on keyboard, and sometimes 3D working other machines and gadgets. This all combined to produce a truly massive wall of sound, that surprisingly sounded great.

If you get a chance to see Massive Attack live, I truly recommend it.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Massive Attack, Berkeley, Greek Theatre, Iraq

TOOL for babies

I was chatting with Will-san last night, and he pointed me to "Rockabye Baby: Lullaby Renditions of Tool". This is one of those things that has just blown my mind - there is a certain part of me that absolutely wants to hear this album, and a certain part of me that doesn't.

Still, if I did have kids, I can't say for a fact that I would be buying this, or several other Rockabye Baby albums...

-Andy.

Sunglasses

After many years spent squinting into the Sun, I have finally broken down and bought my first "real" pair of sunglasses:

The purchase was prompted by my escape from EDS. I wanted to circle around my benefits, and get whatever I could before going on to a lesser health plan. As it turned out, I had $175 of benefit dollars that could be used for eyeware, so ka-ching!, new glasses.

They are prescription, which means that I can actually see stuff when I wear them, which is theoretically good when driving. In using them today, they definitely helped to keep the sun out of my eyes. But, I can already see that I'm going to be forgetting them everywhere -- as I did today, leaving them at the office when I snuck out to run an errand after lunch.

But so far, so good.

-Andy.

Blogging backlog: my 30th birthday

I've been pretty busy the last few weeks, and as such, I have accumulated a bit of a "blogging backlog". One of the things that I didn't blog about was my big 30th birthday, which happened a few weeks ago. Actually, it happened during WWDC, but I was so busy with said conference, that my friends weren't able to celebrate with me until a couple of days after my birthday.

But, we all went to a nice restaurant in North Beach for dinner, and it was pretty great:

The group assembled after dinner.
L-R: Pratima, Kalpana, Bill, Mike, Sheila, me, Tanya, Chris, Nick, Anjali, and Kevin.
Photo credit: Nicholas Riley.

The restaurant, Trattoria Pinocchio was quite good, and the company (of course) was excellent. I think that everyone had a good time, especially Chris, who loves going up to San Francisco whenever he can get the chance!

:)

-Andy.

Starting my new job at a new company

So, today was my second day "on the job", so to speak. I started working yesterday for a company called AggregateKnowledge. So far, things have been going pretty well. I'm still trying to figure out what I can and can't blog about, but I did check and I am allowed to say who I work for. :)

What I can say, is that's its great to be able to look forward to going into work again, and in particular I'm interested in helping to build the company (and culture), and blog about what I can along the way.

-Andy.

Tool at the Oakland Arena, September 3rd 2006

On Sunday, I headed up to Oakland to catch Tool live at the Oakland Arena. I'm not sure if Tool managed to sell out the entire arena, but the floor tickets (where I was) were definitely sold out, and the crowd was as wild as ever. Contrary to the last couple of shows, I actually tried to get up close, and as a result, had to fend off some of the mosh-pitting idiots. Here's a shot of the stage while it was still being setup:

The stage, being prepared for Tool

The setlist was fairly similar to the last time that I saw Tool play, with the major exception that they played "Right In Two" live:

1. Stinkfist
   
2. The Pot
   
3. Forty Six & 2
   
4. Jambi
   
5. Schism
   
6. Rosetta Stoned
   
7. Right In Two (with an intro that sounded like a bit of "Intension")
   
8. Sober (with extended intro)
   
9. Lateralus
   
10. Vicarious
    
11. Ænema
    

Tool's live show has certainly evolved since the Lateralus and Ænima tours. Thinking back, it was probably possible to see the change on the last tour, but it is certainly more striking now.

The main change that I am referring to is that you can actually see the members of Tool now while they perform live and on stage. The large video screens that used to take up the main stage have been diminished, and now actual lights focus on actual band members during the songs. How very... Rockish.

Look, you can actually see the band. And check out the half-displays. Weird.

The video screens that were present on the stage of at the Oakland Arena were much shorter than usual - they only came up to MJK's shoulders. As a result, it was very hard to see most of the video from my vantage point (on the floor, reasonably close to the stage). The video was also played on the giant ceiling-mounted monitors, which was probably a lot more visible to the crowd that wasn't on the floor:

My view of the scoreboard at the Oakland Arena, showing Tool videos.

The other big change that was revealed towards the end of the show (for the last 4 or 5 songs) was the addition of lasers to Tool's visual effect repertoire. Oh so rock.

The new stage setup - the lights dropped down, and the lasers flared.

MJK really didn't talk much at all - he only talked in between songs like, 5 times. It added to the more "mechanical" feel of the concert -- Tool is usually so tight, that their live shows can take on that sort of feel. With the modified visual elements, the show feels even more mechanical than usual.

Diffuse green lasers and smoke for the grand finale.

All in all, I'm glad that I went (even though it was actually pretty expensive), but I think that the last show at the Paramount was better. At least, I was far more into it. The pluses of this show: Adam was in fine form, and I got to hear "Right In Two". The minus was that it lacked a certain sort of energy. I get the feeling that Tool might be on the verge of wrapping things up after this tour cycle finishes. While I really hope this isn't the case, "10,000 Days", and this tour, will certainly be a fitting send-off.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Tool, 10,000 Days, Lateralus