So the so-called biggest band in the world played in Raleigh Saturday and the biggest story today is how awful the traffic management was.
I’m kinda indifferent to U2 myself, though many of my friends went to the show and enjoyed it. Personally, I would have to like U2 a lot more to wait 4 hours in traffic and see them with 60,000 other fans.
U2 plays Carter-Finley Stadium tomorrow night, so I asked Kelly if she’s ever seen them. She said she had, so I jokingly asked her how much her ticket cost. That sent her marching into the attic to fetch a handful of ticket stubs. Proof!
Tickets for tomorrow night’s show start at $100. Kelly saw them play at Maryland’s Capital Centre in 1985 for a whopping $13.50! That’s less than the Ticketmaster fees tacked on to tomorrow night’s show. Even tomorrow’s $20 parking fee is more expensive!
For the old Oculan folks out there, you may be pleased to watch this promotional video [40 MB MPEG1] I dug out of the attic last night. It ran on a certain broadcast network’s prime time news back in August 2003. Look closely and you can see the back of my balding head at 2:24 – 2:26.
Ah, Purple Box. We hardly knew ye.
For some reason, MT.Net has been deluged with Yahoo searches for “Michael Jordan’s net worth.” This leads folks to my earlier musing about the legends surrounding Jordan.
Yahoo is running this story on their front page about His Airness buying a rather large house in Jupiter, Florida. There is a tiny link under the headline “Michael Jordan’s Costly Mansion” that runs the search. So essentially MT.Net is one step away from being linked to from Yahoo’s home page.
(And for those of you who were wondering, Michael Jordan’s net worth is estimated to be somewhere north of $400 million.)
This evening when I put my juggling balls back into the air again, I noticed a startling effect. For a moment I felt as if I had all day to catch the falling balls! My mind was completely in tune with the falling objects.
Athletes talk about being “in the zone.” Today I was in the zone with my juggling. It’s a great feeling and a sure sign that my juggling is coming along nicely.
This month Wired magazine spills the beans on how Netflix plans to take over the world – or at least make your cable company irrelevant:
Today, nearly 3 million users access Netflix’s instant streaming service, watching an estimated 5 million movies and TV shows every week on their PCs or living room sets. They get it through Roku’s player, which was successfully launched in May 2008 …. They get it through their Xbox 360s—Microsoft added Netflix to its Xbox Live service last fall. They get it through LG and Samsung Blu-ray players. They get it through their TiVos and new flatscreen TVs. By the end of 2009, nearly 10 million Netflix-equipped gadgets will be hanging on walls and sitting in entertainment centers. And Hastings says this is just the beginning: “It’s possible that within a few years, nearly all Internet-connected consumer electronics devices will include Netflix.”
You know your Time Warner stock? I’d suggest you short-sell it, pronto. Netflix isn’t through with changing the media game – permanently!
I just found out by way of my friend Tanner that an old TriLUG friend died in a fall this month. Her name was Leah Kubik but we knew her by her IRC nickname of Heinous.
I’d only met her a few times in person but she was one of the few female Linux geeks I knew and had a quiet, sarcastic sense of humor. She moved from Raleigh to Toronto many years ago and I lost touch with her. Sad to hear of her untimely death at the age of 29.
For our last day in New Hampshire, Kelly and I had another leisurely morning at the hotel. We checked out around 10 and returned to the Red Arrow Diner for breakfast.
After eating another great meal, we hopped in the car and headed north to Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown. Bear Brook is New Hampshire’s largest state park with 10,500 acres. It has over 40 miles of trails and a pond or two. We were looking forward to exploring it.
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We got back from New Hampshire last night around 10 PM. Our flight from Baltimore was delayed about two hours by a late incoming connecting flight, mechanical issues (ignitor in left engine wouldn’t start), and weather (thunderstorms in Raleigh). Still, Kelly and I were just happy to be getting home.
As I waited to fetch our bags from the baggage claim area, another passenger behind me was picking up his bags. He was in his late 50s, grey hair, and had a Bluetooth headset stuck in his ear. As he hurriedly grabbed his bags he was cursing up a blue streak. I never will understand how some people have so much anger that they’ll fly off the handle over something that is completely out of their control.
In spite of Mr. Self-Absorbed Jerk, I’m still in awe of the miracle of aviation. It never ceases to amaze me how I can walk on a plane in one city, fly at great speed over all obstacles, and arrive safely in another city. In spite of my love of rail travel, nothing yet invented can take the place of the airplane.
As promised, we spent most of the day in Portsmouth and Kittery, having a great time looking around these two towns.
Before we left, we had to get “breakfast,” though it was already past 11 AM. The hotel manager suggested a few places, one of which is the Red Arrow Diner, a shoebox-sized diner that really packed ’em in. We waited patiently with a line of 20 other people to finally get two seats the bar. And you know what? It was worth it! People gladly wait however long it takes to get seated. We both enjoyed our meals and signed the guest book for good measure. If you’re ever in Manchester and are looking for food, check out the Red Arrow Diner: open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
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