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Racing The Rain

Jason — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 15:20:23 +0000

Yesterday was fun. My friends and I, tired of winter, decided to take one of the few nice days to come our way in a long while to head outside and do some walking.

The plan was to head out to the zoo in Syracuse to wander around and look at some animals while we cured our cabin fever. The plan was complicated by the fact it was going to rain sometime in the afternoon so we were in a race against the rain pretty much. Thankfully, it held off until we were done walking around the zoo. There were lots of animals to be seen, and lots of kids too. It was way busier there than we thought it would be, but I guess we weren't the only people to have the idea to get out while the getting out was still good.

The most notable thing at the zoo was the lions. They were right up next to the glass so you could literally stand inches away from one of them and see all the little details. That was very, very neat. The penguins were actually wandering around outside too and even did some swimming around. We also saw a pair of very frisky otters. Well, one of them was frisky. The other seemed totally disinterested. Also, one of the lemurs was moving and they never move. I still think it was a robotic lemur…

After the zoo we went out and did some shopping and then headed to Chili's for dinner. Which was excellent. I've never had ribs but I wanted to try them so I stole one from the plate of one of my friends (well, with permission of course) and mmm…tasty. I think I'll have to have some next time we go out that way.

After the food we went back to their place and hung out for a while. Clerks was on which I hadn't seen in a while. But by the end of the movie I was falling asleep, so I made my way home. All this outdoors stuff really tires you out.

Hopefully real spring doesn't take too long to come. I'm getting very sick of all this winter and snow.

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Roller Coaster Concert Ride

Jason — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:52:33 +0000

Video Screens At the Show End

If you may recall, my last blog post mentioned the fact that Wassy and I were going to attempt to head out to Albany to catch a TSO concert on Sunday, but we were worried about a stomach bug that was going around. As it turns out, we were both fine to go to the show.

Then we (I) was worried about the weather as we were supposed to get some really nasty winter weather about when we were going to be driving out. So we ended up leaving at 11am (for a 3pm show, 1.5 hour drive in good weather giving us plenty of buffer time). The plan was to go eat lunch at place that we ate at before when we went to see Dream Theater in Albany (Jackbit and Joltz, an "australian" sandwich place), then head to the show, then to Chili's afterwords.

The title of this post contains the words roller coaster because that's exactly what yesterday was. The drive up was nice…no weather problems at all. We got to Jackbit and Joltz to find they had closed, but we weren't too worried about that as we has 2.5 hours thereabouts to find somewhere to eat. We ended up chosing a KFC that was of questionable quality (especially their Dr. Pepper), but at that point it was just adding to the experience.

Green Fire!

We had an awful lot of time before the show, so we headed out to Crossgates Mall to wander a bit. Wassy stopped by the Apple store and played around with the new multi-touch touchpads on the MacBook Pros in Photoshop CS4. She was sufficiently wowed by it. It did look really neat. We also discovered that there's an IMAX theater in albany. Which made us wonder why we drive to Rochester for our IMAX movies (it takes about twice as long to get there than it does to get to Albany).

After wandering for a while, we headed back out to the show where we hit a really huge snag in the form of INSANE traffic. I-787 was a parking lot so we ducked out at an exit and tried to navigate the streets of Albany to get to the parking garage. This was extremely slow going. Tensions and frustrations were rising and it was starting to look like we wouldn't be able to make the show in time. I eventually navigated down some side streets with the use of the GPS to attempt to circumvent most of the gridlock and we ended up in sight of the venue just before 3pm, still stuck in traffic. I told Wassy that she should hop out and head in because it might be a while before I find a parking spot and she hadn't seen the show before, so she went in and I was left to get to the garage. we were there late enough where I had to park on the garage roof.

By the time I got there it was after 3pm. I didn't want to wait for the elevator down so I sprinted down 6 flights of stairs and all the way across the parking lot building and the length of the times union center to where I could get in. As it turned out there were having some issues with one of the lighting pieces and that delayed the start of the show, so we were able to catch the whole thing. After the horribleness that was the ride in, the show was totally awesome.

I've said before, and I'll say it again. If you have not gone to see TSO, you need to go. Because nobody does a show like these guys. Case in point:

Fireworks!

See?? Wassy took some very aweome pictures during the show so that's where all these images are coming from. As per usual, the lighting was set up on movable trusses that reconfigured themselves as the show went along depending on the song. They added a lot more uses of laser and pyro through the entire show and it was really nice. The new string master (female violinist, first name is Anna…but I'm blanking on her last name) was running around the stage and really getting into it and rocking out. At points she slid across the floor on her knees and bent over backwards to play on her back, and one time she took center stage and bent over backwards while still playing. She's very very nimble.

Obligatory Laser Shot

The first half of the show was the normal Christmas Eve and Other Stories set, which is enjoyable enough. It kinda lulls in the middle due to the presence, chiefly, of the song Old City Bar. it grinds the momentum of the show to a halt. We were in the PERFECT seats for First Snow. We It was "snowing" all around us and the lasers flashing off the falling snow was awesome.

The second half of the show was much more high energy and they threw in a lot of songs that they don't normally do which is nice for people who have gone to the show year in and year out. I really prefer the second half of the show to the first every year and this year was no exception. The new songs from Night Castle were good too, and I'm looking forward to that album. 2009 is looking to be a good year for music.

Before I get off the topic of the show, I just wanted to add this final picture from the grand finale. THIS is how you end a show:

Now for the down slide of the roller coaster. The show ran late, due to the lighting issue, so as we were leaving the, next show people were coming in, which caused havoc with the parking garage. We got back to the car just in time to have everything stop moving. Since we were at the top of the parking garage, we basically had to wait for everyone else to get out before we could even start moving. I suspect there was some sort of gridlock situation that was encountered as well because nothing moved on the roof for at least an hour after the show. Eventually we decided to leave the car parked and see if we could find someplace to eat while we waited for the congestion to work out. We wandered around for about 30-40 minutes and couldn't find anything that was either open or any good. so we went back to the car to determine that nothing had moved . Period. Half hour of nothing moving at all. It was…horrible. Eventually they started directing traffic to get people out but it was about 2 hours after the show ended before we finally made it to Chili's.

This part of the roller coaster ride was where it finally started to go up again. We had a really nice dinner and Wassy really enjoyed her margaritas. Not so good waitress, but we got our food and it was good. The car ride home was fun as well except for the part where we got stuck behind a snow plow for about 4 miles. But after all the stop and go traffic of the day, I was happy to just be moving.

So overall not the major relaxing day that we had both hoped we'd have, but the concert was awesome, the stuff before and after was good. The traffic kinda canceled it all out though. Next year: Going to a show in a city that isn't playing 2 shows in 1 day. Going to a show with a parking lot instead of a parking garage. Not going to the Times Union Center again.

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The Weekend Of The PSP

Jason — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:21:09 +0000

Ok, I promised you a weekend update and you're getting a weekend update!

On Friday, I noticed that the government had been so kind as to deposit my income tax return into my savings account, so I had a little extra play money. And my friends had suggested going out to Syracuse to do some shopping so I was thinking I should finally buy myself the Sony PSP that I was trying to figure out how to fit into to my budget for several months now.

So I went out with them to Syracuse where we ended up (eventually) at the Carousel Mall where I purchased my PSP, as well as Final Fantasy Tactics and PaRappa The Rapper. After which we attempted to find a local indie music store, The Sound Garden. It ended up being in Armory Square in Syracuse which means the parking totally sucked. We found a spot eventually and walked over to the store and looked around. As far as music stores go, I thought it was pretty nice, but lacking a bit in the progressive selection. If the parking wasn't so horrible I'd go back there more often, but it's hard to justify a trip to that area just to visit that particular store. I should also mention, randomly, that on the way back to the car we were freaked out by some cops doing donughts in the somewhat snow covered parking lot we were parked in. It was an empty section, but still kinda freaky.

After that we went out to eat at Chili's, as I mentioned earlier, where I sorta stretched the limits of what was acceptable to eat according to my new healthy eating guidelines. But it turned out all right in the end. We went back to their apartment for a while and I played some PaRappa the Rapper (I don't think "played" is the correct word, considering I suck), under the false impression that I would be able to send it over to Wassy's PSP and we could try out multiplayer on the first level. Unfortunetly, all it sent over was a 1 level demo. Oh well.

I also received a call from my Mom in Pennsylvania while at the mall. I'm looking for a
chest or cabinet thingy to take the place of my CD rack in my
living room that a) looks nicer and b) I can stick a little 5 gallon
fish tank on so I can get the betta I've been wanting since I started
my whole fish adventure a little less than a year ago. So I sent her
out looking for something that was acceptable as she was heading down
to amish country and could probably get something of good quality
pretty cheaply. She called to let me know she found something that would fit my specifications and it
seemed reasonably priced, so I told her to grab it. So I'm one step closer to my betta now.

Sunday I spent a lot of quality time with my PSP because of me having to do laundry. I played Tactics quite a bit, very good game, as expected. I'm really enjoying the PSP except for the battery life, which pales in comparison to the DS Lite. However, that's not really a fair comparison and it gets enough to be useful anyway. I'm just going to have to charge it more often.

Sunday evening I watched the Oscars with my friends. Well…long distance anyway. It gets over with too late on a Sunday night for me to actually go over and watch it with them, so I watch it from my place and we discuss via IM. I've been doing this the past couple years and it's something I enjoy doing now. It's also good for getting ideas for movies I want to netflix. But I think I'll break out the Oscar section of the update into it's own post. More later!

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