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Most everyone knows that I live in Georgia, and having a house in Cobb County, puts me in the heart of the conservative South.  Working downtown at a pretty progressive company has disconnected me from the conservative landscape that is my hometown--that is until this weekend.  With Super Tuesday approaching, I've gotten 5 calls over the past 3 days from the Mitt Romney attack squad, claiming how he was the true conservative out there.  The first 4 calls repeatedly reminded me of how John McCain worked with Ted Kennedy (*gasp*) to pass legislation.  There was also one call that had a completely out of context quote from Bubba, vaguely trying to connect McCain to being some unabashed liberal.  This night's call from the Romney campaign was claiming how much Mike Huckabee loved to tax and spend, and how Mitt was the obviously the conservative choice.

Needless to say, these calls are all awesome, and as soon as I get a new mic for my computer, I'm going to record them and post 'em for your listening pleasure.

After getting semi-burned by Vanguards much hyped, then less than stellar release, I've tried to avoid getting caught up in the "next big thing" hoopla surrounding upcoming MMOs.  Age of Conan has been in the news lately for it's repeated delays (most recently moving from March to May of '08 release date), but this tech demo video from CES definitely has piqued my interest.  There's something refreshing about seeing someone take a fantasy setting that doesn't involve elfs, dwarves and orcs.  The visuals are great looking, and the animations looked killer too.  The moment that made me go "wow" was the shot of the character mounting his horse.  What a refreshing change from clicking a button and having your mount "poof" into existance!

One of my Christmas gifts this year was a vinyl copy of Hendrix's Axis: Bold as Love.  I'm not the first to state this, but I really appreciate vinyl, and how when you put the needle on the record, you're making a decision to listen to the music.  These days, people have a tendancy to "hear" music, that is, it is on in the background, but they are not focused on it.  It is there to act as a noise blocker at work, or to provide a distraction while they workout.  The act of listening to music means that you are actively focused on the music, to take it in, and appreciate it.

Below are the lyrics to "Bold as Love".  Before getting a vinyl copy, I had already picked out the song as one of my favorites from the album, mostly due to the great guitar work on it.  In sitting down to listen to the song, the vinyl gave me the added bonus of having the large gatefold packing, with the lyrics printed on the inside.  That let me listen to the music, and actually hear the lyrics and see the picture being painted.  This song is art--the music and the lyrics combining together to form a complete piece.

Here are the lyrics:

Anger he smiles, towering in shiny metallic purple armour
Queen jealousy, envy waits behind him
Her fiery green gown sneers at the grassy ground

My red is so confident that he flashes trophies of war and
Ribbons of euphoria
Orange is young, full of daring,
But very unsteady for the first go round
My yellow in this case is not so mellow
In fact Im trying to say its frigthened like me
And all these emotions of mine keep holding me from, eh,
Giving my life to a rainbow like you
But, Im eh , yeah, Im bold as love
Yeah, yeah
Well Im bold, bold as love (hear me talking, girl)
Im bold as love
Just ask the axis (he knows everything)
Yeah, yeah, yeah

Holy cow, what's all that white stuff everywhere?!  It's just a result of a bunch of moist air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico bumping into cold air coming down from the arctic.  See all the photos of a snowy day in Marietta here.

After a few frustratings tries and near hits, Lunestra finally was able to make up a batch of leather barding.  I'm wasn't too enthused about the improvements to mount stability--I was more interested in how great the stuff looks.  There's also apparently a way to apply dye to the barding to change the color, but I'm pretty pleased with the gray and tan look that I ended up with.  I suppose this would be the MMO equivalent to pimping out my ride...

After a ton of grinding (and trust me, crafting in Vanguard is pretty much pure grind), Lunestra dinged 21, and was able to go out and learn Thestran thatching.  So now she's going to be dutifully thatching away to help build the house.  I've already gotten 2/20 thatch made and in place.  Another benefit of her being an apprentice outfitter is she will be able to building sails, ropes and rigging to help Inara build ships.

Photos from this past Christmas up, and you can see them here.

Over the past year, my dad has done a great job of treating me well when it comes to listening to music at work.  Early last year, he bought me a pair of Grado SR60s headphones, and this Christmas he got me a HeadRoom Total BitHead headphone amp.  The BitHead not only serves as an amp, but it also serves as a USB audio device, meaning that you can bypass that crappy on-board chipset and run it through a decent sounding sound processing chip.  It runs a Burr-Brown PCM2902E DAC, and seems to be really well supported across a variety of OS platforms, seeing that it was picked right up by linux distro when I plugged it in.

So far, the combination of headphone and amp has been killer.  Last year I started the arduous process of replacing all the mp3 files that I have with lossless FLAC copies.  While it may not have been friendly to my available disk space, it has made music listening at work a much more pleasant experience.  Without any equalizer tweaking I've gotten great results.   All of the FLAC files have a superb, rich sound.  The sound stage is really wide and airy.  All the instruments are really distinct sounding and are not lost in some muddy musical haze.  But, what really impresses me most about this setup is bass presence.  Typical big box headphones have no low frequency presence, and sound completely washed out and tinny.  When you hook this up and start playing songs, you'll swear somewhere replaced all of your music.  The bass is ridiculously melodic, silky and omnipresent, but not overpowering.  You can feel it in your head, but in a very satisfying "this is what music is supposed to sound like" way.

There are a few recordings that really stand out too.  Kylie Minogue's Give it to Me from her Fever album sounds so completely different on this setup than on normal headphones.  The song has a kicking, driving bass, and the tinny sound that lesser headphones produce is totally missing, replaced by real sounding music. Willie Nelson's voice on Crazy from his Milk Cow Blues album is front and center, oh so clear, and he sounds like he's sitting in the cube across from you singing.  The Flaming Lips It Overtakes Me... from their At War with the Mystics is superb sounding too.  The bass pumps but is entirely distinctive, not intruding on any other instrument, the vocals are smooth, the acoustic guitar towards the end of the song is crystal clear and sweet sounding.

The pair also does a decent job on 128+ bit mp3 files, although if you listen, you can hear the difference between the mp3 and FLAC files.  The mp3 files don't have the same breadth to the sound stage--they seem a little more confined.  They also lack the whole feeling sound of the FLAC files.  The music seems a little more muted and not as rich feeling.

If you listen to tons of music at work, and are not one of the millions of mindless "I just use music as background noise iPod clones" (sorry Larry), then I'd definitely recommend looking into spending ~$200 and adding a whole new pleasent taste to your work life.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but youre older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought Id something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
Its good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

Courtesy of the proto-typical geek Wil Wheaton, Guinness is good for you!

I knew my wacky diet was going to pay off...