pastepunk

Just bought the Roomba 415 - I had been waiting and waiting for them have a new Roomba up since it last appeared in January.

Stick To Your Guns are actually pretty cool - they've got an Ignite influence embedded in their metallic hardcore. Stray From the Path is a grizzled tech-metal band along the lines of Converge and early Dillinger Escape Plan. Solid tour.

I really want to hear someone cover "Popular Opinion."

"Gasoline" was also on eMusic; not sure if the latest one is up yet...

Had about four inches at my house before the freezing rain and sleet started. My house is on a court and on the crest of a big hill. I'm not looking forward to talking that downhill sheet of ice in the morning...

Me, the baby and his dinosaur friend.

My take on this... I can't believe it's been eight years since I took the LSAT. A few off-topic thoughts included. - If you can afford a structured LSAT class, do it. Yes it's a lot of money, but you will benefit from the forced time to study and prepare. - Law school is what you make of it. It's not fun and it shouldn't be, but you can still have a great time as long as you don't let the competition aspect of it get to you. The line about a law degree being a great gateway to other stuff is mostly bullshit. Most people still have to pay their dues as a lawyer before they have the luxury of doing "other stuff" with a degree. A law school's career services department is there to get you a job as a lawyer and they will probably not put the time and effort into helping you otherwise. It can be a lonely road without their help. If you do not have the will or the want to be a lawyer and just see this as a path to find a job somewhere, I advise picking something else. - As for the job market matter for lawyers -- (1) it's foolish to think that the glut of newly minted lawyers right now will be a hangover for someone who is several years from graduation; (2) location, location, location -- sure it might suck in Chicago (and most other major cities where firms are cutting associates left and right), but most law jobs are NOT in big firms and what is going on there is not at all representative of the entire legal field.

Great thread - I love this stuff. I like the Half Hearted Hero a lot, and Atlas Losing Grip was a huge pick up last year. To go to some old stuff, I highly recommend the White Kaps 'Endless Bummer' from the early Fearless days and anything by Funeral Oration.

...and touring Surely - I didn't mean to discount that at all. I also think some bands need to be a little smarter about touring - perhaps driving a shitty van with bald tires through the Rockies isn't the best idea in the dead of winter, or doing routing that's 500-600 miles a night where everyone in the band looks barely alive each night.

A few things to consider... - I think there were way less bands 10+ years ago - Recording material took a lot more effort - Localization was far more important in both building a following and making friends with touring bands that came through town. It's strange how with the internet we've created hyperlocalization with neighborhood blogs and all, and yet a lot of the core ways to promote a band in a very specific area have disappeared. I think it would have been absolutely crushing to the underground to have the kind of music retail shakedown in the early 90s compared to now. I think the national presence of MySpace (well... the internet in general) distorts how popular a band really is. Why does a band with 30,000 friends, 80,000 plays only draw 20 people to their local shows? There's a zillion blogs out there, but who is reading them? I think you'll find that outside of a very crowded top of the chart, most have a pretty small readership.... and of course, most fade away in several months anyhow. Bands that end up succeeding are generally doing the same way - writing music that make people want to talk about it.

Don't forget about the LLC!

If I was a social scientist, I would be spending many hours studying human behavior on that board.

I like how he seems to know he's been busted for trying to push the box of diapers out of the room...

Two photos of my son Andrew who is now 11 months

I can tell you that as a music site editor, I almost always ignore unsolicited Sonicbids emails sent to me. It's not that I'm against this kind of setup for bands looking for press, but in a flood of emails, these tend to get lost. I do think the organization and presentation of the services offered w/ Sonicbids is pretty cool though.

Awesome - I just embedded/linked to the Blood Red on Pastepunk. I really miss this band live and went to most of their LI shows around this same time period. I can only hope that Tommy brings Capital to DC one day.

Pastepunk's Best of 2008 (Editor's Picks): http://www.pastepunk.com/features.php?v=276 Staff members have their lists posted too.

Congrats! My son is 10 months old - you've just started on a pretty wild ride!

its not sneaking into a show when you arent required to pay. no one was in the wrong except you. if you can handle the responsibility, then get someone else. Is this a real poster?

I'm into it... for an album that runs as long as it does, it's amazing how little downtime there actually is. Will be buying it on Sunday!

If you're near a Target, they sell Swiss Gear messenger/laptop bags of decent quality for $30 or so. I've been using an LL Bean messenger bag as a work bag for four years and it still feels and looks brand new, despite the beating it takes from the commuting grind.

Less than two months. My last Dell desktop nearly made it six years before being put out of its misery... Despite the grief it gave me, I was sad in relocating it to the basement corner with the other elderly pieces of technology.

I got rear ended by a Ford F-150 into my lil' ol Corolla on I-95 in Virginia while listening to Days Like These's "Inventure." Fairly appropriate title. On a related note, the last thing I listed to in a car of mine that got stolen was Killswitch Engage's "Alive or Just Breathing." As pissed as I was about having my car stolen, I was really mad about leaving the KSE CD in the stereo.

I've got a BB Curve through Verizon. I would never trade away Verizon's quality connection for the cheaper price at T-Mobile. I pay 39.99 for the 450 phone minutes, $30 for the data connection (that's the BIS plan, the BES plan is what you would use if you were connecting to an enterprise email server for work email). A texting plan is extra on that. I'm a big fan of the Curve, though I agree that adding the Opera Mini-Browser is essential.

I've got a brand new 500gig Maxtor drive that works just fine with 64-bit Vista. I had an older 500gig model (late 2006 model year) that wasn't Vista compatible, and when I installed it on a whim few weeks ago, Vista supposedly found drivers for it. During the installation of the drivers, something screwy happened in the process, and the drive became inoperable. Damn you Vista!