Rage Rage at the Dying of the Light

Amazing

2010-07-31T14:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when we least expect it, we find something amazing in the most mundane locations. I had that pleasure going to see a friend on mine play with his friend at a small bar on downtown Tolono, IL.

I had heard Matt play before and knew he was good - but had no idea just how good he really was. Matt and his band mate go by the name of Big Red Skillet.

Here is the deal - for those of you that know me, you know my opinion of country music. I respect the artists that are out there, but certainly do not have any country music stations programmed into my car stereo. That being said - Big Red Skillet may make a country music disciple out of me yet.

Mark Millsap - fantastic on the guitar. He plays with feeling. You can hear the heart with every note. And it was a pleasure to hear you play and put the hammer down on the lead breaks. One of the few guitarists out there that allow their lead playing to enhance the song, not try and steal it. Even when playing covers, this is a very important aspect that most live acts miss out on.

Matt Bundy - where can I start. You play with passion and honesty. Those characteristics are so relevant to playing live. It draws the people to you and allows you to command the stage. Your charisma and singing ability are truly inspiring and incredibly impressive. I was so amazed at your singing talent. For those that have not heard you sing, they need to do so. Immediately. Keep on going, I cant wait to hear you sing again. I was stunned and literally thought I was at a professional show with some huge rock/country star.

It will not be long until you two shake the dust of this area from your feet and move on. You certainly have the ability to do so.

Looking forward to the next gig. You have made a believer out of me.

Wyatt

BIG RED SKILLET ! IS AT IT AGAIN!
THE LAST CHANCE SALOON TOLONO ,ILL...
Saturday, August 21 at 9:00pm

BIG RED SKILLET! PLAYING IN C...
BENTLEY'S PUB
Friday, August 27 at 10:00pm

May Start Writing Again

2009-10-27T18:59:00.000-07:00

I have had a long time off from writing much of anything. Not sure why, but I always let life get in the way of actually living it.

I just felt moved enough to share this little piece of music with all two of you that read this blog.

It is a long story why, but it reminds me fondly of times long past, much simpler of days, and of innocence since washed away.

To our younger years - we will always hold on to you, because it is you that make us who we are today.

To those of you who may still be at that younger age, and especially to my two sons - who you are today creates who you will be tomorrow. Tread carefully on what you do and say. Make your future happen in the way you decide. Do not let others decide it for you.

This is why I quit playing guitar...

2008-10-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

Roots, Bloody Roots

2007-07-18T13:38:00.001-07:00

Bow down to the music that paved they way for everything heavy today.

Music Store

2007-06-23T09:37:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went over to Indiana for a music fest. On the way, a friend wanted me to check out a music store he discovered. I thought "what the hell", but wasn’t expecting too much. I guess I am just used to today’s CD stores such as Best Buy, Circuit City, and even Wal-Mart to some extent. But let me tell you that walking in to this place was an awesome experience and it made me realize how much I miss a true record store.

Immediately as you walk in your senses are awash in the atmosphere. Simple things such as real music flowing through the real stereo system. Not the manufactured and formulated crap that the music industry has created that you always hear playing over the P.A. at Best Buy. The walls were covered wall to wall with posters of not just well known music acts, but also more obscure and underground bands as well. Even the small details were great such as the pungent smell of incense and the "20 something" dude behind the counter. But more than all of that was the shelves and shelves (not racks) of CDs. It was a veritable music paradise. The shelving setup made it very easy to flip through the thousands of CDs they had. They were all organized by genre and then each section had bands listed out by name for each letter of the alphabet. For each letter there was also a "Misc" section - this is where the treasure hunting was at. I could have spent hours and hours crawling through all of the CDs. I went in not expecting to spend a dime and came out of the store 50 bucks poorer. Give me another day where I actually have more time and I will spend about 5 times that.

The coolest thing about the place was their support of independent labels and bands. This is where Best Buy and the other corporate giants fall off of the map. There were so many titles that I have been looking for that the giants do not carry. And the used section was almost as large as their new section - yet again, Best Buy and the ilk can not compete here. I will never again spend money on CDs at Best Buy - I am just going to save up and go every couple of months to this place in Indianapolis and give them my money. In the mean time I will be scouring the area that I live for somewhere similar. There are a couple, but they are not as big or well maintained.

Check them out. It is worth it. Vibes Music

Remote Desktop Failure on Windows Server 2003

2007-06-18T20:16:00.000-07:00

Just like it says up at the title, we had 4 or 5 servers mysteriously start to deny any remote desktop connections after a patch update. Not sure which patch caused the issue because we patched up to SP2 and pushed all remaining patches after that.

After a great deal of testing different scenarios such as stopping the Virus Protection Service (Mcafee in this case), assuring all proper users were in the remote desktop users group, checking to see if windows sucky-ass firewall was running (it was not) we had to resort to any good engineers best tool. Google.

This was more of a challenge than usual because there was a lot of crap on this issue. We had to dig through quite a bit of useless garbage until we finally found a helpful hint. I just want to add it here in hope to make the search for the next sorry sucker who has this issue a little easier. I should add a bunch of meta tags in the code behind this, but I am too lazy for that.

Bottom line that fixed our issue: re-register the remote desktop connection dll.

in a command prompt type in regsvr32 remotepg.dll

Reboot system and voila.

Are you kidding me!!!

2007-06-01T16:04:00.000-07:00

Words are not enough. Just watch and be amazed.

Bow down before the almighty Andy Mckee

Horns Up

2007-05-15T13:30:00.001-07:00

My alter ego had a chance to run wild this last weekend. I was at the Milwaukee Metal Fest helping a friend out with his record label. He was a co-sponsor and had a distribution table set up to sell his wares. While he was out scouting bands I would watch the table from time to time if his assistant wasn’t around.

The festival had over 80 bands, a veritable smorgasbord of death metal on display. I have always liked heavy metal, the harder, faster, and louder the better. I get chills up and down my spine during sound checks. I can barely contain the built up energy. I just love the way it makes me feel.

Sound Man: "Bass Drum Please"

You hear the drum...*bap* *bap* *bap*...

Then the sound man runs it through the P.A.

*PHOOM* *PHOOM* *PHOOM*

Then the guitars check and when they get run through the PA you feel that first sound wave of shredded distortion hit you and wash over you like a tidal wave of hatred and hostility. But it doesn’t insert those attributes in to you, it rips through you and carries your own hatred and anger away.

There were quite a few bands that stood out, but none so much as Abacinate (check out the radio to the right). I was waiting for them to start playing and was planning on being quite reserved and just enjoying the show and taking a couple of pictures. Wrong. they belted in to their first song and when that double-bass kicked in it practically caved my chest in to my spine. I felt it more than I heard it. The guitars were spot on and I was awash in a death metal frenzy that I wasn’t expecting. I felt like I was 15 again. The riffing was amazing, a clinic on how to shred with the heaviest of the heavy. It practically peeled the flesh off of my bones. And the vocals...man oh man. You can just hear the hate in his voice.

All of this may sound shockingly negative. But in reality it is quite therapeutic. I thought the heavy metal brotherhood had died a long time ago, but it has not. It is alive and well in the underground. I remember the days when you would see someone in the mall with a Metallica or Slayer T-shirt and you each gave a knowing nod. An instant recognition of a secret bond and brotherhood. I see the same thing now, but metal has moved back underground - and it is a welcome change.

This could not have been a better weekend for me. It cleansed me. It washed away all of the pent up stress and bitterness that I have towards work. And it reminded me of my alter ego who would have just as readily given an auditor the middle finger in response to a asinine audit as opposed to a memo. I think I'll keep some of that edge with me for the next couple of weeks. Because as all metal heads know - "Id rather feel like shit than be full of shit".

\m/ - Horns up!

And it got even better because I won this guitar in a raffle. I rule!

Fast Forward or Rewind?

2007-05-09T19:07:00.000-07:00

Had a talk with my aunt and she mentioned that it would be cool to take her old Vinyls and convert them to MP3s for her Ipod. So after some quick research...here we go

Convert Vinyl to MP3

Also, there is some other cool software to ponder. Remember when you just used to make mix tapes by recording your favorite song off of the radio? Didnt it make you mad when the D.J. wouldnt shut their mouth and they ruined the whole build up of the song? Well...welcome to radio mix tapes 2.0 baby!

I listen to Yahoo Launch Cast Radio at work all day long. It is great internet streaming radio that lets me cusomize the music I listen to. Great quality and no commercials (because I pay the $2.00/month. It is worth it.) With Replay Music installed it automatically records every track and lables each sone and artist properly. Too awesome for words in my opinion. At the end of the day I have 40 or 50 new Mp3s to add to my music library. And of cours eI always make sure I own the original so I am not violating any laws...*cough* *cough*

Gaming - The way it should be

2007-05-09T18:05:00.000-07:00

Thats right folks, todays modern era of gaming has pretty graphics and some decent story lines, but nothing matches the old-school twitch reflex games of yesterday. Remember the going to the arcade when it was actually fun? Rows of games all calling out with their signature sound effects - even some pinball games like Black Knight. The lights were always muted and the music was always loud. I remember the greats like Galaxian, Qix, Tempest, Defender, Elevator Action, Joust, and the all time great...

Robotron 2084
(click the picture below to play online!)

(IE Only Folks)

The games changed, but never could they compete with classics like Robotron. Soon there was Tron, Galaga, Rastan, Road Blasters, the list goes on...

Lordi - Diet Gwar

2007-05-09T11:54:00.000-07:00

My new favorite band...

Shenanigans at work

2007-05-07T18:25:00.000-07:00

Office environments can be a lot of fun, sometimes for your benefit and at other times not so much. In my office we work late a lot. And when you work late you get restless and try and figure out things to lighten up the load and pass the time more enjoyably. One game we invented is with a giant orange traffic cone. It works well as a voice amplifier. So the trick is to sneak up behind someone without them noticing. With cone in hand you yell through it and say something obnoxious like "Butt Wind" or "Clown Shoe". What you say really isn’t important, it is just the volume that really counts. It is a little more humorous when you answer a question that they asked someone either over the phone or a third party standing next to them. So, like this then...

victim: "what time is it"
3rd party: "I'm not..."
Cone Master "IT'S THREE - Forty Two!!!!"

The victim jumps a mile and hilarity ensues.

So, I coned an office mate this evening. Quite funny, we all had a good laugh. Later on, my boss tells me to get up and come to his office to look at something in system scan. Just as a leave my office, the guy who got coned earlier blasted an air horn at me.

Funny for everyone, not so much for me.

I will have my revenge.

VPN Tunnels

2007-05-07T15:31:00.000-07:00

So, sometimes creating a VPN tunnel to another network can be a bear. Not so much because it is overly complex, but more so because the tech on the other end of the line insists that your appliance is the problem. Prove them wrong with logging.

I know there are not a ton out there, but here is how to set debug logging on a Netscreen 208:

set console dbuf - Sets the debug buffer up
clear dbuf - Clears out any leftover messages in the buffer
debug ike detail - sends all ike messages in detail to the buffer

Now try and connect through the tunnel.

undebug all - Stops logging
get dbuf stream - prints the contents of the buffer to the screen

Im not really that smart, a friend at work showed me how. The moral of the story is that sometimes you have to give empirical evidence to the clown-shoe on the other end of the line to convince them that your systems are not configured incorrectly. So make sure you not only know how to read logs and interpret the results, but also know how to get at logs that are not there by default.

Sharepoint

2007-05-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

Ever need to know what version of Sharepoint Portal Server you are running? I did, and it took me a while to find out. It isnt an obvious spot to look. Here is a great resource that lists what specific version numbers mean.

Contemporary Christian Music

2007-05-06T19:29:00.000-07:00

Good music, lame words. I cant help it but for the most part I think that contemporary Christian music has pretty trite and shallow lyrics. Tree63's Blessed Be Your Name - a classic example of really lame lyrics with really great music. (Sweetly Broken by Jeremy Riddle is exempt) I love reading the traditional hymns, some are real poetry in motion. But man - the music sucks. I always used to dread looking at the closing hymn and seeing it was sixteen verses long and went on for 12 bars. Then of course the tempo would be a snails pace. 36.7 minutes later the song was done.

I should start a contemporary band and just cover old hymns. We could just be called BORN AGAIN - ha ha. double entendre there.

We could have Strong Bad front the band

Spirit renewed

2007-05-06T19:14:00.000-07:00

I was present for a friend of mine being baptised this morning. It was a really great service - very Pentecostal, Hands in the air, cheering, music going, full immersion, etc. All in all the service was very moving. I could feel something at work and I can only assume it was the holy spirit. I do not usually attend a contemporary church service and this was a nice change of pace. I do not think I could do it every Sunday as I have an old soul and the presentation of the traditional service sooths me. I love Catholic services, incense and all.

For my friend, it was a moment of happiness for me. Not so much because he had "found God" or been "born again", but because I think that he has filled something in his life that was empty. I have never seen him this content and this happy. I think a lot if that has to do with his wife, but overall there is an aura of tranquility around him that I have never seen before. It gives me hope for the rest of humanity.

He stated in his testimony that "the enemy" had filled his life full of questions and doubt that made it hard to believe. I thik maybe another way to look at it is that God knew that those doubts would only make his faith stronger - he just needed the right time and situation to see the truth. Intersting how God can take something and turn it around.

I know the feeling as a parent to want to always keep your kids out of trouble, protect them from getting hurt, keep life from attacking them. But the best we can do to really help our children is to let them fall, help them back up, dust them off, wipe their tears, and send them back in to the world. It hurts, but it provides them what they need to survive and thrive. And they know that we will always be here to pick them up again. I think, in sense, God does the same for us.

Obscure but great

2007-05-05T12:35:00.000-07:00

Take a listen to Mad Season - Artificial Red on the radio player to the right. It isnt Metal, but it is a great track with a lot of heart.

Where are all the good ones dead? In the heart, or in the head?

2007-05-05T12:22:00.000-07:00

For those of you Metallica fans from long ago, this video illustrates the former greatness of a once mighty band. What happened? Their heart is dead.

Master of Puppets with To Live is to Die intro...amazing - it gives me chills.

Creeping Death - Thats right, the best Metallica song ever and this is the proof. to see them play it with this amount of energy and ferocity...just wow. Remeber back when they cared about the music? Listening to this while sparring is bad news for my target. Just listen to the last verse and Jason's backing vocals "Mother fucker I shall pass". For those of you in the know, you will feel it.

Curse you

2007-05-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

So, I have been sucked in to the coolness of blogging by a friend. I am a competitive sort of guy and I want to have the best blog out there. It will take forever to get there, but I am patient too. I have a good idea...but for now I will just toy around with adding neat little widgets. Very fun stuff.

Welcome back old Blog

2007-05-04T09:14:00.000-07:00

well, here it is - May. so much for a good start on posting. I will do better. I kept waiting for some profound thoughts to type out and I realized that most of them have been said by others better than me. So I thin I will just post some random things that float through my head and maybe some tech notes for work. As a good friend said, google has saved my ass at work many times. I think it is time I return the favor. Here is a good tidbit -

The Juniper Intrusion Detection and prevention systems lie. Thats right, they lie. I have an IDP1100 inline and set to accept all traffic while I am baselining the network activity that flows through it. Do not ever put an IPS or a firewall inline and actively prevent traffic until you have a solid traffic baseline. There are a lot of false positives. At any rate, these bad boys are actively dropping traffic that is heavily fragmented. There are hidden logs that are not displayed by default. Once you view them you can see the traffic getting knocked down even though you specifically exempted all blocks. The only solution I have found is to make an explicit exemption from source to target and allow all traffic. Pretty weak at this point as far as a solution, but still working with Juniper to get it ironed out.

A new start

2007-02-06T12:51:00.000-08:00

Ok, here is a fresh new start on keeping a Blog. I didnt do so hot last year. At any rate, I plan to update this guy every week on Sunday evenings.

Here is to some good future conversations...

-Y