I got to see their concert yesterday, with openings by the lead of a group now long gone, Burlap to Cashmere, and a Christian folk group known as Caedmon's Call.

It was an acoustic guitar showcase, and should not be missed if they come through your area.

The first artist, Steve Delopoulous (a Greek man with a name too long to recall accurately), took time to do a couple of tunes on his own, and one extra with the only electric guitarist of the night - Andy of the aforementioned Caedman's Call - which used the electric guitar solely because it had a whammy bar and his guitar didn't. The first artist's guitar work is interesting, if only because he will change between individual plucking of strings at a somewhat rapid rate and strumming so fast I'm surprised he has *skin left* about eight to ten times a song. The man can play an acoustic guitar, but some may prefer something more conventional.

Caedmon's call has an interesting percussion setup. They run normally with two percussionists - the first keeps mostly to his drum set, though at one point he brought out a tambourine and hit the thing with his stick. (This seems to me to be a quick and dirty path towards needing new drumsticks. Hitting a tambourine is what a thigh, or, if microphones do not permit such, your other *hand* is for.) The other drummer was what is called an auxillary percussionist; he had a drum set available, but I didn't catch him using it. He had a set of small high-hats, a set of small gongs, his choice of other doo-dads, and a large kettle drum that, when miked, makes the chests of those standing right in the front of the stage vibrate. (...such as mine. ^________^ )

Then, of course, Jars of Clay. The set included choices from a hat - here, they were "Frail", "I'm Alright", and "Revolution", and I can't argue with those choices all that much. Of course, there were choices from their new CD, who we are instead. Of note are "Amazing Grace", which is *completely different* from the song everyone who has seen a church in the past decade (or, alternately, Star Trek II) is familiar with.

More importantly, Jars of Clay played without an electric guitarist.

They had their acoustics plugged in, and had a percussionist and a piano/accordion player available, as well as something with strings that you sat down to play (an electric mandolin?!?) that was much plucked and had notes held for ambience when needed. Still, it was an acoustic show, and these guys can play acoustic guitars and harmonize.

You'll need to have Flash to see their site, but it's got the concert dates and the set list right there for viewing. Go see.

I logged in Tuesday just to look around (don't we all?) and the screen said, "You have 5 moderator points! Use 'em or lose 'em!"

It's a quaint experience, I'll give it that. The only problem that can occur with the system is that it's hard for even hundreds of people to find five singular posts that they have an opinion on and end up with all of them covered, considering that this site gets roughly two hundred responses to a single main topic, not to mention all the special-interest topics to the side. I gave a few to main, a few to games, and at least one to a poll of the day. Now, I'm done. Not hard, but...interesting (+1), I guess.

Ah, yes, my other job.

Normally, we start on a Friday Night, showing up in formation in cammies at 7:00 P.M. or 7:30 P.M. Note that I do not say "around" - this is the military, and you will be prompt for it unless you like cleaning bathrooms and getting yelled at. This time, it was a Saturday start, so it was around 3:50 A.M. that I left Delta, Ohio to go to Detroit, State I Don't Care About. (For more on why I hate that state, click here.) The morning involved weapons cleaning, the afternoon involved a retirement formation and a Battle Skills Test - Two Whole Hours of Fun! - and the hour after final formation, when we were to be released, was taken by an emergency equipment location and repair order writing session. Yes, it could have been handled much earlier, but the Inspector/Instructor staff member involved chose not to tell us about it until the last minute. And I could've been in the SvC Chaos tournanment too...oh, well, I got to be cremated in Street Fighter III: Third Strike. At least I landed Q's super on the Chun Li in the loser's bracket...small, small victory, I know.

Sunday morning was gear inventory. It should be noted that, normally, we are given a computer printout of what we have and what we rate, and we note what's there and what's not. The same inspector/instructor noted above is converting this very specific accountability method to simply marking down "set numbers" on what we have, seeing as he had no accountability on the stuff that was checked out for the other companies in our battalion when they went to Afghanistan, Djibouti, and Iraq. This is where the corporal situation differs from the private to lance corporal or the sergeant and above scenarios. I had been up late at the arcade, and my sleep from 1:30 A.M. to 6:00 A.M. wasn't cutting it. I managed to offer some assistance on the work, but it became clear to me that the task was well at hand between three groups of non-NCO's led by senior lance corporals. Thusly, I drank a lot of water, checked on things, helped people, drank more water, walked a bit, helped people, found a place to hide, napped a bit, came back and saw things were still on track, ate noon chow, sat through a class held by the PWST officer, bugged the admin office over various matters, and went back to nap until the drill was over, as there was nothing more to do.

It scares me that it's so easy to find places to hide in the Brodhead Armory. ;-)

My last entry was ended a bit short, as the time to leave for work had arrived. But that's good, since it leaves a separate post for the most notable of my message board's exploits: Mystery Octagon Theater 3000.

For those few of you here that are not aware of one of the best shows, given the content, the format involves the product of a person's fetid imagination (for us, its bad fanficiton), and a number of entities that, being forced to pay attention to these monstrous creations, make fun of them openly.

What seems to set us apart from so many others doing the same thing is our tolerance and insanity levels. For some reason, both of these rise together. I blameThe Multimediocre Knight, but I also have deep suspicions regarding others such as Gavok and The Black Snotling. At any rate, the end result of our labors is often found worth reading, even if you have to look at what the guy who provided us "inspiration" himself wrote.

Well, since I have a free second before work, I figure I'll tell all one of you who might be listening about The Ballad. See, around, oh, the summer of 1996, there was this thing called the Multiverse Video Fighters' Council, an offshoot of Sean Givan's Dream Tournaments on the USENET group rec.games.video.arcade. A quick check of the feedback link from that Wayback Machine page will reveal a rather large group of people talking about...well, generally video games, but just about anything was game. Short answer: We're still talking.

Since then, we've had a few meetings - once for a wedding, and a couple other times at OTAKON, the anime convention so big, it got a video game character named after it. In fact, we're about ready to take the next step...

...yeah, you guessed it. We're having a get-together just for us. It will be cool.

So, I'm a proud holder of an associates degree.

This, of course, means it is time to leave the world of cheap retail labor and earn a lot more than I have, I suppose.

Of course, jobs fitting the degree must first be present. In the case of a computer programmer, it wouldn't be too hard, except that the economy's nasty. Hence, employers have say in whom they take on, and they want experience in the field.

For some strange reason, people who just graduated with an associates degree only have so much of that sort of thing, and it's usually less than asked for.

It would also help a lot if I didn't live in Ohio, which has nearly as many acres of corn as desktop computers. (I could be exaggerating here, but I somehow doubt it.) Thus, the need for computer jobs, and, therefore, myself, is pretty low.

At any rate, that's what the college is there for, and why I'm sitting here today relaxing after reciving comments on my resume. It has a few obvious and some not-so-obvious things to work out, seeing as it was only a slightly edited cut-and-paste job from the template at Monster.com, but it organizes the data, and that's a job I like other things to do for me. I enjoy hassling computers to get them to work the way I want them to; I don't like being hassled by paperwork.

So, having actually sat down and set up a Slashdot account, I'm clicking through responses regarding SCO's legal arguements, and then wondering what to do next.

I see the journal option on the sidebar. It works for me, I guess.

Livejournal is considered the standard for this sort of thing, but - I'll be honest - it's just because of the cross-referencing capabilities. Apart from that, all you really need for a journal online is space to put it on and a way for it to be accessed. Any free homepage service can offer that, and you can put other stuff on there, as well. For instance, look at Wanderer's homepage. His blog is on the right side of the main page, and the left side is all the stuff he's involved himself with.

That'll do for a first journal entry, I guess. I'll have to do more sometime...maybe.