señor taco’s travels

alt="Spun Sugar Rose" />

Well, the wedding was short and sweet and to the point. The minister had it
right in his talking about marriage as love and not an obligation to anyone.
It was a well done sermon and not too heavy on the God stuff.

Amanda looked great and Robert was his goofy self. The cake at the reception
was baked by a Master Pastry Chef and was superb.

Not much else was eventful except the “security” check by the private company
that had uniforms resembling the TSA, but not really being the TSA. I refused
to remove my shoes because I know the Puma’s won’t set off the metal detector.
Because of that they made me wait to the side to get wanded and have my ankles
felt up because when the wand got near the floor it went bizerk. It didn’t
go off any other time, surprise! I have to say that was one of the most facisct
“security” screenings I’ve been through. Friggin’ KC.

alt="Memorial for those that have fallen for our freedom" />

Well, my first full day in Kansas City since I was about three. I don’t
remember much of that trip 27 years ago, but I do remember being in KC.

I went with my parents and my sister to see some of the sights around KC.
First we went to the Union Station. It’s an old style train station that has
been wonderfully restored and added to with shops and something called the
“Science City” that has theaters and stuff. After that we went across the
street to the Liberty Memorial
and Museum ( href="http://www.kclibrary.org/sc/architecture/profiles/libertymemorial.htm">
more). After World War One this was built to honor those that fought in
the war. I got some decent pictures of it that I’ll put up once I get home,
but for now that’s where the picture in this story comes from. There are
stone tiles with the names of people that served memorialized on them. I was
most impressed with the tower and dual sphinxes. The sphinxes are probably
the coolest symbol of remembrance of the Great War. Both have their wings
shielding their faces, one to shield themselves from the horrors of war, the
other to symbolize that the future is unknown. The museum was impressive even
though it was very small. They are working on expanding into the open area
beneath the tower, so that might be a reason to come back to KC in the future.

For lunch we went to a place recommended by several friends, href="http://www.arthurbryantsbbq.com/">Arthur Bryant’s and it was every
bit as good as they said. If you go there get the burnt ends. Yum.

After that we went out to the Harry S.
Truman Presidential Museum & Library. That was interesting to visit.
I can see how come he was such a popular president. Our current administration
could learn a lesson or two from him.

Anyway, that was a good day and now I’m off the rehersal dinner. That should
be fun. As I said, pictures from the trip later.

alt="The Duck!" />

I left today for my cousin’s wedding in Kansas City, Missouri. I had never
taken Frontier Airlines before but
back when I was looking at airfare they had the best price and most direct
route. I must say, I was pleasantly surprised at the service. Frontier was
on time, courteous, and had just enough humor to let you know they don’t
just think of you as cattle, you’re their victims too! I liked almost all of
my flight except for the jackass behind me on the leg from Denver to KC. He
wouldn’t shut up and I could hear his droning over the music from my iPod.
[side note: don't ever loose your noise canceling headphones]

Aside from that it went great getting out here. I missed the festivities with
my cousin and such because I got in so late. Oh well. The picture is one side
of the tail of the plane I took from SFO to DEN. Frontier has animals all
over the tails of the planes. Cute stuff.

…well, one that I remember at least. I shall describe it here so I can find
it again later.

It starts out with my family and I driving in my car. My mom is operating it and we’re on Galveston Island.
Along the major city portion of Galveston is a sea wall. It was built after
the 1900 storm and raised the level
of the entire city by 17 feet. So, in my dream it’s a little different than
reality. At the west end of the wall it’s not 17 feet but about 100 feet and
very narrow. There are also factories or refineries along both sides. As
we’re driving along a giant storm has come in and there is water up around
the refineries and really close to the top of the sea wall. Pipes and stacks
are still visible and still billowing but there is very cool looking wave
action happening around them. At this point something goes wrong with the
narrow roadway and we end up careening off the side and into one of the
refineries. It’s amazingly open inside and quite calm under the water. Once
the car settles on some platform I open the door and it’s like we’re under
water, but no water comes rushing in. We can talk, but also swim around and
everything seems to work so I try to make a call on my cell phone, only I can’t
because I have no signal. As we’re waiting in the bowels of this refinery an
elevator door opens and this woman tells us she’s the caretaker of the place.
She lets us into the elevator. Once we’re topside we end up on the beach
with the 17 foot sea wall that is right next to the 100 foot sea wall and the
refinery is still under water. At this point the army is hoisting our vehicle
out of the water for us with some helicopters. Only they don’t pull my car
out the first time, instead it’s some other silver car that some other guy
claims is his, but when he gets into it it turns into a very futuristic
looking two wheeled motorcycle but with a large passenger compartment. He
drives off and then I wake up.

I love remembering dreams, it’s too bad I don’t do it more often.

So, today is Grey Tuesday. For those
not in the know:

DJ Danger Mouse created a remix of Jay-Z’s the Black Album and the
Beatles White Album, and called it the Grey Album. Jay-Z’s
record label, Roc-A-Fella, released an a Capella version of his Black
Album specifically to encourage remixes like this one. But despite praise
from music fans and major media outlets like Rolling Stone (”an
ingenious hip-hop record that sounds oddly ahead of its time”) and the
Boston Globe (which called it the “most creatively captivating” album
of the year), EMI has sent cease and desist letters demanding that
stores destroy their copies of the album and web sites remove them from
their site. EMI claims copyright control of the Beatles 1968 White Album.

So today many, many sites are posting the Grey Album for download. I
think this is the right thing to do, but I don’t have the bandwidth to do
it and I’m sharing it for today, enjoy. I have heard the Grey
Album and while I’m not a huge fan of rap
and hip hop I do find it intriguing. That EMI thinks they can stifle such
innovation that appears to be legal under the fair use clause of our copyright
code is just deplorable. What do they have to loose? How many people that
would purchase or download that album are now going to not buy the White Album?
Zero. Could someone that hears the Grey Album go on to buy the
White Album? Possibly. Ah, retarded corporate culture
strikes again.

While looking at downhillbattle.org,
the folks that created Grey Tuesday and a music activism site, I found a cool
interview with
Ian MacKaye from Fugazi and Dischord. Great stuff, specifically this quote:

When people who are songwriters say ‘That’s my property and if you give it
away for free then I’ll lose my incentive,’ then, well, good riddance.

Okay, the server move went smoothly. Everything should be up and running, but
if you notice something wacky with the site then please let me know.

One change on the blog side is that I went to mostly static content. I still
have comments on for now, but I’ve been getting comment spam so I’m going to
have to figure out how to deal with that. Part of this change is that my RSS
feed has moved (the old one still works until I disable that :) so please
use this link to grab
RSS from here now.

Thanks.

You know it’s all “good” when you get home and:

1. It’s raining and the rain is getting harder.
2. The power is out for blocks and blocks as you drive home. No street
   lamps, no traffic lights, nada.
3. You walk into your apartment and you hear a dripping coming from the
   kitchen.
4. You realize the dripping isn’t in the sink.
5. The source of the dripping is soon apparent to you as you see a trickle
   coming out of one of the cabinets.
6. Listening in the quiet of no power you hear water running upstairs,
   possibly from a toilet.
7. You realize the landlord and upstairs resident is out and you have no
   way to get in touch with them.

Yeah, so the evening started out spectacularly. With the help of M I was able
to get enough information via the intarweb to call one of the upstairs
persons parents. Unfortunately they’re out too so I just left a message.
For now I’ve turned the water to the house off. I’ll work through it but
it really sucks that I have no way to get upstairs and just turn off the one
toilet and dry things out for them a bit. Oh well, that’s the way it goes
I guess.

I’ll be moving things over to a different server over the next couple of days.
Please let me know if you see anything odd.