BOAT! RUDDER! STRANGE! MOUNTAIN!

Heavy metal.  We all know it as that one type of music that is impossible to understand.  That is because of the vocalist.  If you want to be the next singer for Slipknot, then all you need is a face mask and the ability to yell really loud.  I strongly dislike this kind of crap, so imagine how happy I was when i learned that there were a number of parodies of these metal bands on Youtube.  Take this one of the band Trivium, done by Paranoiddave.

Hopefully you know understand what a saviour people like Dave are.  Without them, you would be sitting on your bed listening to Slipknot and Trivium without know what the were saying.  Now, the whole reason for all of this unintelligibleness: two things; all heavy metal singers have long hair, and they were yelled at too much when they were babies.  Professional wrestlers have the same problem, minus the hair.  What can you do to stop hearing metal?  Well, first of all, you could turn off the radio…  But seriously, there will never be an escape from death metal, so you will have to learn to live with long haired people screaming about boat parts and mountains.

You Don’t Know Me!

As most of you iTunes users out there know, when you buy a song, movie, etc, on iTunes, it sends you a confirmation email to tell you of your purchase.  Well, I recently received one of these emails notifying me that the latest episode of a T.V. show, (I bought the season pass) was available,  a very business like email.  It was, however, addressed to ‘ Our Friend Luke’ and at the bottom it was signed ‘warm regards, iTunes Store’.  Now, no one except my friends call me Luke, let alone iTunes, who I hardly know.  This brings me to my main point; You Don’t Know Me iTunes!  Apple is always trying to be your friend.  Their new iPhone commercial is very mellow, a lot more ‘friendly’ than their older iPod commercials.  And now with their more ‘viewer friendly’ commercials, Apple is trying harder than ever to become your best friend.  This does not make me feel any more comfortable.  They are almost as bad as Alltel’s Fluffy commercial.  No matter how much Apple tries to be your friend, they have one major flaw; they are very self-centered.  Their iPods only work with iTunes and they have to have their own speaker products.  If they really aspire to be your best friend, then their equipment should work with all music services.  But that is quite another story…

A Tale of Two Mothers

6:12 am, November 19, 1993.  I, Lucas D’Angelo am born.  The World’s Cutest Baby Award is still hanging on my wall.  But now we jump ahead to March 2007.

March.  Sometime during this month, my dad accidentally dropped a photo of yours truly in, as we later discovered, a store called Honeyspot.  A few weeks later, my dad walked into the store to purchase a card, and saw said photo on a sign stating the store’s return policy.  The owner had named me ‘Jeffrey’ and told anyone that inquired that I was her son.  After my dad explained it all, he decided that the store owner and I should meet.  Spring ahead to yesterday.

July 14, 2007.  I met Hilken Mancini, my ‘other mom’ who actually plays in a rock band, has written a book, put out a few CD’s, taught a guitar camp, and is playing the Artbeat Festival with her band.  So next time you are in Jamaica Plains, go visit Honeyspot and tell Hilken the ‘Jeffrey’ said hi, or go see her band, Shepherdess, play the Artbeat Fest. at 4:30 on the 21st. 

10 Things I hate About AIM Part II

6.  The Profile-This allows people to express themselves for all to see.  They write all sorts of junk about how much they still love their ex’s.  They will also post song lyrics and links to their favorite sites.  So, what do I hate about it?  Well, let me give you an example of what some people will write.   “Oh Phillip, I still love you, I think about you every waking moment.  I’m always thinking of you.”  Enough said?

7.  Screen Names-Aim allows you to pick your screen name, and that is a good thing, but not when people choose to incorperate words such as babe, chick, love, hot, or sexy.  So a screen names such as xoxsexybabe111 is not good.

8.   Acronyms-AIM users have this nasty habit of using acronyms to express what they are thinking.  Such usage is unnecesary.  I have compiled a small dictionary of some popular acronyms.

LOL- Laugh Out Loud.  Let’s face it, no one really laughs out loud.  Unless you are a complete dork, just say ‘hahaha’.  Easy enough?

LMAO- Laughing My Ass Off.  Physically impossible.

ROTFL- Rolling On The Floor Laughing.  Not sure why you would get up out of your chair, lay down on the floor, and roll around laughing.

ROTFLMAO- Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Ass Off.  A combination of the last two.  This is even more rediculous than ROTFL.

ROTFLMAO WAFFLE- If you say this because you think you think it’s cool to attempt and ryhme, then you should go off and live in a hole.

IDK- I Don’t Know (how you could not know what this acronym means).

NVM- Nevermind.

NMU- Nothing Much, You?  In respnse to ‘What’s up?’

9.  Emoticons (or whatever they are called)-Retarded little smilies that only girls seem to use.  There are all sorts of them: happy ones, sad ones, even ones that look like they want to kill you.  Do not use them.  Ever.

10.  Fluffy The Dog-What does this have to do with AIM? Simple.  Aim has ads for Alltel Wireless, and the one commercial that they show where the ‘other networks’ attampt to threaten someone with a dog that isn’t hers.  It belongs to this super buff tough guy with a pug named Fluffy?  Yeah, that is what I wondered too..

Well, there it is.  All 10.  So that’s all for now, or should I say STAFN…

Star Qualities of Charbucks

Yes, Starbucks has some really good qualities, I know.  But given who I am, I will be starting off with the not-so-good ones.  First off, their coffee tastes burned (at least to me, my family, my extended family, and all of my friends), thus the name ‘Charbucks’.  Secondly, they seem to think that they are better than us because they refer to to their coffee sizes, somewhat exotically, as tall, grande, and vente, instead of small, medium, and large, like normal people.  Also, the people behind the counter are baristas, rather than employees.  If you order a medium latte, the somewhat haughty response is, “You mean a grande?“  What happened to the good old adage, “The customer is always right.”  At Starbucks, there is probably another word for customer…  These oddly named coffees are then priced about 97.6% over competitors, but for some reason, people still pay $3 for a cup of (charred) coffee.  They think they are paying for quality, but all they are paying for is the name.  Last of all, the wi-fi.  Now, like most people, I know that Starbucks offers wi-fi.  What I was uninformed of is that it costs money.  Well, technically, it is free for the first 24 hours, but after using up that first 24 hours, T-Mobile HotSpots charges you about $6.50 for the first login, then $.10 for the following hours.  I could not believe it.  I always thought it was FREE wi-fi!  That is why I always go to Panera.

But we are now moving on to the good things.  They make some pretty flippin’ sweet marble cake.  They have clean shops and comfy chairs.  And good lattes.  That’s it.  In my opinion at least.  There is a bit of irony here though; at this moment, I am typing this is a Starbucks in Connecticut.  I am only here, however, for the 24 hours of free wi-fi.  And a slice of marble cake.  

Bike Check 6/27/07

Most recent.  Got some animal GLH tires, some new animal grips in red, a new odyssey brake lever, and got Jody to set me up with a Odyssey straight cable.

  

       The Tire^        Grips and lever^    All That & the Cable^

Bike Check 6/24/07

Also in the past.  Also still catching up.

Purchased and Odyssey Senior Saddle and a set of Odyssey Gary Young bars.

  

Bike Check 4/15/07

I know this date has passed, but I am catching up…

This was my first visit to Timeless..I acquired a WETHEPEOPLE 30t sprocket.

10 Things I Hate About AIM Part I

I know I have written posts in the past about AIM and its problems, but I have now compiled an actual list of the things that I can’t stand about the program. 

1.  The Bots-They are these annoying computer programs designed to act like, for instance, a 17 year old girl.  We will call her Emily.  When you talk to her, she will ask you who your friends are (you type in their screen name), and she then sends out emails to all of them telling them that they are your friend.  This is the kind of crap that AIM Bots do to you. 

2.  AIM Triton-This is basically the professional version of the standard AIM.  A few of my friends and I made the mistake of trying out this version (it was free), thinking that it would give us an overall better experiance.  We were sadly mistaken.  Within a few minutes of the download, Triton had completely commandered my computer.  It had convinced my computer that it was a Barbie obbsessed 7 year old named Barbara Sue.  It also put me on both the Jenny Craig AND all of the televangelist mailing lists.

3.  The Buddy Icons-AIM makes these crummy buddy iconas that say things like, “I don’t mind if he catches me staring, because then I know he was staring back.”  That kind of thing.  In my opinion, it makes you sound like a ‘teeny bopper’ as my grandmother says (she IS cool). 

4.  The Size-The size of the AIM program is rather large.  As a result, your computer is substantially slowed down.  This is not true on my computer, however, because it is faster and better than yours.

5.  The Plug-ins- These are small AIM prgrams that are designed to enhance the fun factor of AIM.  They have things like location which allows you to see where other people are, and Musiclink, which allows the people that you are chatting with to see what you are listening to.  But the worst plug-in is the Buddy Icon Maker.  Once downloaded, it allows you to design and create your own buddy icon, which is usually worse than the standard ones…

Well, that is the first half, and the last five will follow, as soon as I get to it.  I know you are waiting for it…

Boston; The Sights, the Sounds, and the Signs

When driving around Boston, seeing the sights of a cabbie flipping off another driver, and hearing the sounds of the other drivers cursing the cabbie that just flipped him off can be a entertaining experience.  Unfortunately, I am not here to talk about them.  I am here to talk about street signs in Boston.  They are notoriously confusing and misleading.  For instance, driving home from The Barking Crab one evening, I saw a sign: ‘Route 93 right’.  Now, there were four signs labeled ‘Route 93′ in the next 100 feet.  The first two were labeled Route 93, and oddly enough, the other two were also labeled Route 93. Well, that is understandable, i suppose.  But this next sign was the best of the best.  It was an exit of the highway, exit 37.  Only a small barrier blocked the the drop off from the highway.  That amazed me.  But, i suppose, The Big Dig is going on, so I will cut Mumbles Menino some slack.  Anyway, for now, just watch where you are driving, and if you can’t decide which one of the four on-ramps to take, eeny, meeny, miney, mo always works….