I’m off to Yosemite early in the morning Sunday. The plan is to hike Half Dome on Monday. We’ll be coming home on Tuesday. I hope to get some good pictures.

Tommy [at the table]: What’s the matter?
Shelly [walking by]: Nothing.
Tommy: I don’t believe you.
Shelly [walking away]: Nothing, sometimes I just get on my nerves, that’s all.
Tommy [turning in her direction]: You get on your nerves or I get on your nerves?
Shelly: I get on my nerves.
Tommy [getting up]: How?
Shelly [walking away again]: I just sometimes get klutzy at the wrong times and it messes things up.
Tommy: Well you know what Whitney Houston says…
Shelly: What are you talking about?
Tommy: The greatest love of all is to love yourself.
Shelly: Fuck off. [walks away for good]

Courtney has come up with a ribbon that I would actually love to see plastered all over the back of people’s cars. Buy your own “Support Dissent” merchandise here.

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Kissy Wilco Face, originally uploaded by mrwilloby.

Last night I went to Berkeley with Abby to see Wilco. It was a really great time. I had never seen Wilco at a Wilco show. I saw them open for R.E.M. in 2003 and earlier this year at the Coachella Festival. This show was by far the best.

They played a lot of great songs and hearing some of them live gave me a totally new perspective on them. I found myself wanting to go home and play A Ghost is Born with the volume all the way up to see if I could recapture it.

“Muzzle of Bees” absolutely blew me away. It is such a pretty song and rocks so much at the same time. I thought of Akiko during this song because I was listening to that record in the car when I was waiting to meet her for the first time.

During the vocal part of “At Least That’s What You Said” I was about to strangle the idiot “Event Staff” woman walking by shouting at people to move from the aisle. There were a number of us who told her to shut up; she just about ruined the whole experience of that song. Luckily it is so easy to get lost in the end of it that I almost didn’t remember the disturbance.

The most beautiful noise was created at the end of “Poor Places” and I was loving it. I’m not sure how many people can grasp what distortion-laden music/sounds does to me, but it just takes me away…

The greatest part is that because Wilco is a taping friendly band, the show from last night is already being torrented on dimeadozen.org. If anyone out there likes live music, check out that site. It requires a sign-up and knowledge of BitTorrent, but it is very worth it for finding shows to download.

While watching the crowd before the show and during the opening band I started thinking about a lot of my friends; it was nice. There was a girl who walked by a few times who reminded me of April, whom I have to catch up with, she just got back from Japan. I also saw a girl all the way across the amphitheatre, very pretty, whose face made me think of Aimee, who got sick and couldn’t make it to the show. And I already mentioned how I thought of Akiko during “Muzzle of Bees”. I need to write her a letter or something. She’s already gone for the whole summer. Maybe I’ll make her a CD with that song on it.

I had a fabulous time. And it gave me something write about…

If you are a Windows XP user, whether by choice or not, you should check out the Windows XP PowerToys on the Microsoft site. I’ve read about a few of the things before but never checked them out until I read one feature that I could change with Tweak UI. The Open and Save As dialogue boxes have a panel on the side that list 5 or so default places like My Documents, Desktop, and the like. I never use those places to save any files so having them there is useless for me. With Tweak UI I was able to customize that list. I put whatever locations I wanted that I frequently used. It is nice than I even thought it would be.

And as I was grabbing Tweak UI the other day, I noticed a PowerToy called Image Resizer. It adds a little tool to the right click menu that enables you to resize images without opening them in a program. Today I found myself wishing for a simple solution like that and I went and downloaded it. It works just as it claims to. Very handy.

These little utilities make dealing with Windows a bit less painful. They are worth looking at.

I struggled through changing my header today. It was pretty fun figuring out the CSS stuff on my template. There is a bit of the it where I’m not even sure what I was doing, but it changed it how I wanted it to look. Guess and check: an excellent methodology.

update: Fuck IE.

In this always-connected world there seems to be an increasing demand by people to always know where their friends/families/associates are and what they are doing. Some may see this as an intrusion into the lives of one-another, but others, myself included, like to let people know what we are up to. Andy takes pictures with his cameraphone and sends them to Flickr while he is doing things. The rest of us get to observe his life. There are even sites like dodgeball designed to let people know where their friends are when something is going on.

All of this led me to think about voicemail. How come we only get one greeting for people to hear on our phones if we don’t answer them? Obviously we can’t answer the phone right now, because we didn’t, and obviously if it’s important you will be called back. But when? What’s going on? In our fast-paced world, “Sorry I can’t answer my phone right now, but leave a message and I’ll call you back,” doesn’t cut it. It only leads to frustration.

I think there ought to be choices for individuals to use for their voicemail greetings depending on the situation they are in where they cannot answer the phone. “I’m in a meeting, call you back in 30 minutes,” gives so much more important information than the standard greeting and can stop frustration and lead to the caller being productive again rather than worrying about getting ahold of the person.

As long as the choice is there, individuals would be able to customize the messages however they see fit. I imagine it working like Away Messages do on IM clients. “I am away from my computer” works for many people, but others like to say, “Out to lunch,” or “be right back.” Not everyone will want to know that you are currently in the shower, but your callers will know why you didn’t answer your phone if they hear your greeting.

I think it’s time for voicemail to lose the answering machine quality and catch up with the world.

tags: voicemail, idea, communication

I haven’t written in more than a week I know. I guess I have been busy.

Can anyone offer me a job?