Entries Tagged 'Personal' ↓

Tonight I’m off to see Sarah Bettens at Jammin’ Java in Vienna. Sarah is the lead singer of K’s Choice, one of my favorite bands, that I first saw in 1997 with my friend Bridget. It should be a good show — I’ll post an update tomorrow!

Update: The concert was excellent, here’s a review.

I’ve also added a new photo gallery at http://www.ryanpark.org/gallery/. This is created with a very sophisticated web application called Gallery, and it will replace the old HTML photo gallery I used to maintain. Gallery might actually be too sophisticated for my needs, but it ties in well with Apple’s iPhoto, so I’m happy to use it for now.

I hope you enjoy the new visual design I’ve implemented on this site. I found a template called Authenticity at the Open Source Web Design community site. I modified it a little until I was happy with the aesthetics, and then spent hours getting it to work correctly with WordPress. It was a lot of effort, but I think it really paid off. There are still a few rough edges, which I may clean up eventually. I’m considering releasing the WordPress theme to the public. Please let me know if you’d be interested in this WordPress theme.

Thanks to Kenneth Barbour for the great template!

Last week I received an open invitation to a movie night at Ed & Leo’s, which was great, except I had absolutely no idea who Ed and Leo were, or whether I even knew them at all! Well, they may be doing the movie night thing weekly, and tonight I got an invite forwarded from someone I know. Turns out Ed and Leo are really cool and tonight was a lot of fun. Plus, my friend Shawn from Oklahoma was there, who I hadn’t seen in almost a year. I didn’t even know he was back in town until I saw him copied on the invitation last night, so that really caught me by surprise. It was good to see him again though; nice to hear he’s back for the summer. Anyway, some of the people were all talking about their blogs and LiveJournals and websites tonight, so I figured I’d better update mine. I’ll try to keep this updated. I promise. (Yeah, right……..)

On Monday night, I went to see the band Blackfield at IOTA Club and Cafe in Clarendon (Arlington). Blackfield was great, and it was fun to see them in such an intimate setting. The two founding members of Blackfield were present: Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, and Israeli singer-songwriter Aviv Geffen. They were joined by Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater.

Well, for some reason I figured they’d be stopping for dinner at Silver Diner at some point. It’s in the heart of Clarendon, and it just seemed like the kind of place that a touring band would stop before a show. That was about all the thought I put into it.

Today I checked out Jordan Rudess’ blog, and I saw an entry talking about the DC show. Sure enough they stopped by Silver Diner! Here’s a photo taken of Aviv Geffen sipping on “the LARGEST glass of coke in history!!” according to Jordan.

On a mailing list I’m on, a man named Eduardo wrote: “Women should have the responsibility of taking care of NOT getting pregnant, instead of fighting for the right to cover up their mistakes by murder.”

This attitude just reinforces my prior belief: men should not be allowed to opine on abortion.

Searching for yourself is like looking for the house you stand in. How could you possibly find it? It’s everywhere. It’s all you know. And there are no other points of reference.
– D. Gildenlöw

I’m trying to respond to an ad for a new condominium development, and I’m not having any luck. First, the voicemail system says “For Tenacity Condo Sales, press 5.” I press 5 and am told repeatedly, “I’m sorry, 5 is not a valid extension.”

So I hit 0 and get transferred to the company operator. I ask to speak to Tenacity Condo Sales and instead get transferred to some random guy’s voicemail box.

So I call back and hit 9 to get the company directory. I try to find John Fitzgerald’s extension — he was listed as a sales rep in the ad. It’s impossible to find him in the directory. All I get is somebody named DeSilva or something.

I call back and hit 9 again. This time I try to find Jeff Tait. (No, not Geoff Tate.) I find him in the directory, so I hit # for the system to transfer me. It rings once, but then I’m disconnected. It sounds like someone picked up the phone and then hung up on me.

I’m trying to buy real estate from these people and I can’t even get through their voicemail system?!?

I’m going to start profiling some of my favorite websites every day, in hopes that some of you will enjoy the same writing I do. Today I’d like to mention a couple of political sites I enjoy.

The first is Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish, at http://www.andrewsullivan.com. Andrew considers himself a conservative, though these days I’d classify him as more of a “libertarian” than a “conservative”. He’s constantly chastising the Bush administration over various threats to individual freedom, and really concerned about Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq. I don’t agree with everything he says, but I agree with a lot of it. More importantly, though, he’s really focused at debating the issues, instead of getting side-tracked over personal squabbles, ad hominem attacks, and the other “rubbish” you see from most political commentary.

Another one of my favorites is Chris Geidner’s Law Dork blog, at http://lawdork.blogspot.com. Chris is a law student at Ohio State University, and he has a lot of interesting things to say. He writes some commentary about legal issues and political issues. His viewpoint is a bit further to the left than Andrew Sullivan, but again he writes with facts and clear argumentation. Chris and I also have a wacky bunch of things in common, which makes it fun to read about what he’s thinking.

Tomorrow I’ll try and profile a couple technology sites.

I spent the past weekend in Atlanta, where I hung out with a few friends and went to a couple concerts. I hung out with Shawn Allan, a Lambda Chi from Alfred University in NY, and Paul Graham, a Lambda Chi from GW. I also saw the band Pain of Salvation, one of my favorites, performing at a progressive rock music festival. They came all the way from Sweden for just one show. I’ve got a few photos from the trip here.