I'm probably going to be copying these entries on Facebook in the 'Notes' section, so if you aren't my friend yet, what's your problem? :p

Just do a search for the Nathan Lind in the Mpls/St. Paul area. I have my profile hidden to everyone but friends. Or just give me your link and I'll add you.

I'm not going to delete this journal, but your best bet to find updates on my life will be on the FB from here on out. It's just kinda sad to see a month at a time pass between my entries and not care one way or the other. It's been fun, but lj has run its course for me it seems.

-Not much going on with me. Bought a few of the Beatles remasters on Wednesday. Hard to believe, but I had never bought any Beatles albums before then. The 'Red' and 'Blue' albums I got for Christmas one year from Jen. My first exposure to the lads from Liverpool was on my dad's reel-to-reel (!!!) player. For those who don't know what this is, a reel-to-reel player is almost like a giant cassette tape. (For those of you who don't know what a cassette is, you have missed out on the joy of making mixtapes, of which I feel sorry for your soul.) Except you have to manually load in the reel to the player, and wind the tape by hand into where it can be read. A cassette does this automatically. Anyhow, continuing...

When he was stationed overseas in the early 70s, he had a lot of downtime I guess, and pretty much bootlegged all the Beatles albums, a ton of classical music stuff, some Simon & Garfunkel. He even has an original reel-to-reel pressing of Black Sabbath's Paranoid. If you knew my dad/saw him, you would have some idea of how hysterical that is. When I was 14 or so, I discovered this reel-to-reel player down in the basement and all these reels my Dad had illegally copied. Seriously, there were probably 30 or so, all full of stuff. He kept a notebook detailing what was on all of them, and that was where I first heard albums like Rubber Soul, Revolver, Help, and Abbey Road. Needless to say, my mind was blown. I actually devised a system where I made mixtapes off the reel-to-reels with shockingly great sound quality. I thought I was pretty cool, not having a CD player at that point, but having a boom box and reel-to-reel player in my room. Unfortunately, I did not have the giant 70s headphones to hear this stuff. :p

So, it was a trip hearing these albums this week, (remastered and sounding effin' amazing) being that I hadn't listened to them like that since high school. I had forgotten about songs like 'I've Just Seen A Face,' and 'The Night Before,' not huge songs in their catalog, but ones I loved just as much. It was like seeing an old friend you had forgotten about almost completely, but when you see them, you're immediately taken back to the last place you were when you were together. If you're on the fence about getting any of these remasters, go get them now! You won't regret it.

You can rip on the Beatles for not releasing all this stuff earlier, or the over exploitation surrounding them this week, but it's like everyone has said. It's the music that matters. And I was reminded of that in a big way.

-I was thinking of getting an ipod touch with the money I got for my birthday, but I keep hearing rumors of an eventual video camera being added into it sooner rather than later, and so I, myself, are on the fence about this. I really want to go mess around on the app store (I have a list at work of all the apps that sound interesting I'd like to check out), but I don't want to get something, and then have a newer, better model out in a few months. That is, if you believe the rumors the camera ipod touch is coming.

-Backspacer, leak already!!! Seriously, though, Tom Tomorrow did the cover art, and some sleuthing youths have discovered that there are stories behind each of the nine images on the cover. The one I'm fascinated by is this:



The painting makes this look like an ethereal, dreamy landscape, but it couldn't be further from the truth...

The Most Beautiful Suicide



This photo ran a couple of weeks later in Life magazine accompanied by the following caption:

On May Day, just after leaving her fiancé, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale wrote a note. 'He is much better off without me ... I wouldn't make a good wife for anybody,' ... Then she crossed it out. She went to the observation platform of the Empire State Building. Through the mist she gazed at the street, 86 floors below. Then she jumped. In her desperate determination she leaped clear of the setbacks and hit a United Nations limousine parked at the curb. Across the street photography student Robert Wiles heard an explosive crash. Just four minutes after Evelyn McHale's death Wiles got this picture of death's violence and its composure.

From the obituary...

At 10:40 A. M., Patrolman John Morrissey of Traffic C, directing traffic at Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, noticed a swirling white scarf floating down from the upper floors of the Empire State. A moment later he heard a crash that sounded like an explosion. He saw a crowd converge in Thirty-third Street.

Two hundred feet west of Fifth Avenue, Miss McHale's body landed atop the car. The impact stove in the metal roof and shattered the car's windows. The driver was in a near-by drug store, thereby escaping death or serious injury.

On the observation deck, Detective Frank Murray of the West Thirtieth Street station, found Miss McHale's gray cloth coat, her pocketbook with several dollars and the note, and a make-up kit filled with family pictures.

Amongst. The. Waves.

Well shit, since everyone and their mom has abandoned livejournal, what good does it do to post about some cool Mac software you may or may not have missed? I might double-post this on Facebook so don't be too offended if you see this twice.

First up, Monolingual. As the front page notes, 'I don't know about you, but I use my computer in one (human) language.' My guess is most of you do, also. Monolingual safely deletes all the extra language files that come with your Mac, clearing up a bunch of hard drive space. I was able to recover 2.7 GBs of space after I ran it. That's gigabytes! It's easy to use, and the best part is that it's FREE!

A cool System Preferences Pane is Growl. It's a system notification app that lets you know such things as when files are finished downloading, what's being scrobbled in Last.FM., there's really many apps that are compatible with Growl. You set up what apps you want to be notified on, and boom, it just works. Also FREE!

Web 2.0 is in full effect and it does get a little old to switch between apps and websites to get updates on your Twitter or Facebook feeds, or checking your web-based email. And what about linking to your favorite photo sites or youtube to add links to those? Worry no more. The social web browser Flock allows you to keep track of all these things at the same time! There's a free tutorial on how to use Flock at the link, and for those who like to be plugged in at all times, it's a great browser which runs on the Mozilla engine, meaning if you're on Firefox, a lot of your same plug-ins will work in Flock, not to mention your bookmarks are smoothly imported. Once again...FREE!

Today, if you're not backing up your computer on a regular basis, you're putting all your important data at risk. You probably should have an external backup drive somewheres, but for additional protection, why not use the web? There are several options you can consider, but my favorite right now is DropBox. It allows you 2 GB of online storage free, but for as little as $19.99 a month, you can have 100 GBs. The reason why I chose this over other places like Carbonite is its seamless integration with the Mac OS. You can access it directly from the menu bar, and it automatically syncs between your computer and the "cloud." You can use it on multiple computers, also, or send a link to files and folders you want to share with people. (Hint: If you sign up, I'll share some cool stuff with you. Nudge nudge wink wink) There's also a free tutorial at the website, and if you use this link to sign up, you'll get an additional 250MBs of storage free! As will I, FYI.

Hope you find at least one of these picks interesting!

Forgot to mention that the original house we got screwed on bought apparently was sold to someone else. They got $200,500 for it.

So, factoring in closing costs (assuming they were about the same) the sellers got $5000 more than what we offered. That's it.

On one hand, I'm kind of vindicated that everyone but them knew they weren't getting $220 or more and that they didn't. I don't think the house was worth $200, but.... On the other hand, I'm still miffed it sold at all after we had bought it.

Yesterday was June 7th. It should not have been 49º for the high. I had to bust out the coat again after packing it up. Temps were about 30º below average. I think we set an all-time low for a high temperature, they tell me. I did not think I'd have to use this lj picture for a good six months. Oh yeah, and the heat is off in the apartment. It's a balmy 62º in here right now.

Livejournal tells me it turns 10 this month. Will it see 11?

I needs boxes for packing. We're about 60% done with less than two weeks to go, which is about 59% better than what I expected at this point. All the credit should go to Jen on this one. We are out of boxes, though.

How hard is it to install a water softener? Any ideas? We got a new free one from the sellers, so I ask. Maybe they'll put it in for us, who knows? Just wanted some rough time estimate if anyone knows it.

Closing is next Tuesday morning. Final walkthrough is the night before. Insane.

Saw 'The Hangover' yesterday. Good Lord! Hilarity ensues!

Finally, what better way to close my first lj entry in two weeks by posting video of Poison's Bret Michaels getting slammed in the face during the Tony Awards?

http://www.undertowmusic.com

We are profoundly saddened to report that our friend died in his sleep last night. Jay was a beautiful human being who will be missed.

I'm stunned and saddened right now. Not only was he an integral part of one of my favorite bands ever, Wilco, he produced one of my desert island discs, Tim Easton's 'The Truth About Us.'

I wonder how many other people knew this, but Jay's last record was released through a Creative Commons license. Called 'Whatever Happened, I Apologize,' it's a melancholy disc which seems devastating right now as I listen to it. You can download it here.



Thank you for the music.

This place is as dead as shit. I wonder if people just anticipated lj shutting down, and left in advance. Well, that's not going to slow the demise any. I do have a wordpress account set up, but I'm not posting in it...yet. Now I'm REALLY glad I didn't pay for an account when it was up.

I never knew buying a house could be so stressful. Being on call pretty much every night in case some new development happens, stressing about offers and counteroffers. It's exhausting. Thankfully though, things have been going well. Tomorrow we find out if the sellers agree to our requests after the inspection report. The only major things were we requested the sale price be lowered by $2000 to fix the patio door (which apparently is rotting at the base) and to fix the deck. I wouldn't recommend anyone lean on the railings right now. Over you'd go.

Work is el sucko. Two years ago, the basement of my building flooded after a pipe used to divert rain to the sewage system broke, sending rain and sewage everywhere. The owners of the building have been remodeling since. My unit got temporarily moved to the basement while they renovate our work area. There's no carpeting or paint down there. The major problem has been the owners neglected to remove the dust from the drywall, and we've been breathing that shit in for the last week, not to mention it gets in your skin and clothes. Everyone of us have had breathing problems, and I actually stayed home one day this week because my lungs were on fire. The owners claim they've been wet-vacumming every night, but we don't see a difference. And really, shouldn't that have been done BEFORE we moved down? We also have about half the cube space we normally do, which has made doing work a little difficult. I think if things don't improve, we're going to the union to see what can be done. I shouldn't have to pop 4 ibuprofen every day to deal with headaches. Blah. There needs to be a party or something tomorrow (since it will be warmer here than it will be in Dallas, I hear) so I can de-stress and fuck shit up. My shit, not yours.

This has pretty much been my life over the last week. Exciting, eh?

In honor of the new season of baseball kicking off, here is my favorite baseball commercial ever. Titled 'Chicks Dig The Long Ball,' it follows former Braves pitchers Greg Maddux & Tom Glavine in their quest to become better hitters. :p