This past Friday, we were invited over to a friend of a friend’s house for an Arrested Development farewell party. Party might be a little bit of an overstatement, as it was eight people, four pizzas, and a lot of TV watching. Not that I’m complaining; really, that’s my ideal idea of a party. Good to meet some new people, and have people to share the joy/sadness of the final four episodes with. Afterwards, we watched the rest of the Opening Ceremonies, slightly punchy and mocking the athlete’s headgear. The person whose house it was is in a band that is playing at SXSW, so we helped made buttons for them to sell at the show. Very mellow and pleasant evening.

Saturday started off poorly with some emails and text messages informing me that the site was having some problems. Spent several hours futzing with database, which made for a lousy Saturday afternoon, but at least it proved that, even if the database decides to stop working, the sites all run just fine (as they were designed to do). Saturday night, tried out a new Indian restaurant. Found a lot of decent, but not terribly fantastic Indian food here so far, so would like to find someplace really good. This place was pretty good, but a little spendy (two entrees, two samosas, and naan came to over $30, which seems excessive). Walked down the street from the Indian place to our new favorite theater (which is both cheap and serves pizza and beer), but failed to get sufficiently motivated to attend, as our choices were Constant Gardener, Proof, and Shopgirl. Not sure what it says when movies don’t seem good enough to justify a $3 admission price.

Sunday was uneventful – much of the day was spent on an ongoing hunt for a nice vintage radio cabinet. We need something for the TV to live on that we can stuff components inside of, and I’d like to find something I could build a media PC inside of. Finding lots of 70’s radio consoles, but they’re a little too frilly to fit in with our living room. Going down to take a look at a very swanky old Grundig down in Lake Oswego this weekend.

Highlight of the week has been the rediscovery of the Rigorous Intuition blog. I came across this a while ago as a nice listing of odd 9/11 events (the first entry, I believe) and visited again this week (due to a BoingBoinged entry discussing an alleged mind-control victim’s assertion that she was hunted by Dick Cheney) I have spend many fairly late nights going through the archives here. Really some nice work on the MK-Ultra/ARTICHOKE mind control stuff, and the author seems very fond of a vast right-wing-Crowleyist-Moonie-defense conspiracy concept.

The Crowley angle is interesting, as most of my exposure to Crowley’s ideas come filtered through various hippie/anarchist types for whom the “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” is treated as more of a “non serviam”/anti-authoritarian dictum. Last year, I read Sex and Rockets by John Carter (a book I heartily recommend), and it contained the full text of Liber OZ (which you can read here). The whole thing strikes me now as less anarchic/pantheistic (as R.A. Wilson and others read it) and more of a statement of Nietzschean ubermenschiness. I now read Crowley as being very much in favor of the liberation of the individual at the expense of all others, which merges much better with the modern Republican movement than with my bleeding heart socialist outlook.

Which isn’t to say I entirely buy the “military-industrial complex kidnapping children to sacrifice in Satanic rituals” theory, but it sure is fun to read about.

Now that I’ve finished ripping all my CD’s, I’m really in need of a good jukebox software. YME was working all right, but once I upgraded to 1.1, I lost the ability to just play everything I own on shuffle (and, in fact, it won’t even open now due to the size of the now playing queue I managed to create). Since I messed up my ability to get the “unlimited” aspect of it for free back when I worked at Yahoo!, I’m not really that tied to the product, so need to find something else that will let me A) play everything on random, B) play by artist/album, C) rip CD’s, D) update the metadata easily, and E) won’t take up all my CPU utilization.

Tried out Foobar briefly, but it was taking forever to build the library, and I got impatient. iTunes is quite happy to play everything I own (with no lag time between clicking on a song, and it kicking off a global shuffle), but will only play about 5 songs before it crashes.

Downloaded Songbird today – very lengthy initial scanning to get the files and then a painfully slow attempt to get enough data that it could actually build the library data properly. Not sure if this is due to their servers getting pounded today, so might give them a try late tonight and see if it’s any better. But, doesn’t have CD-ripping and I haven’t messed with it enough to figure out how to get the services I want instead of the ones that come with it. Probably the help notes would have explained this, but, as mentioned, their site is getting hammered, so can’t read the docs.

So, what am I left with? Winamp? I do like the ability to easily filter by artist/album/etc. on occasion, which Winamp didn’t have last time I used it. I suspect I’ll get a biased answer here since at least 60% of my friends list works on one of the products listed above, but does anyone have a jukebox software they really like?

As I mentioned a while back, I’ve been having a pretty bad arthritis flare-up with my left elbow and knee. I had juvenile rhumetoid arthritis as a kid, and it comes back to be an annoyance every once in a while, but this bout has been pretty bad (lots of swelling, pain, loss of motion, etc) Went to the rhumetologist, who loaded me with lots of medication, which didn’t work too well. His next step was to inject my joints with cortisone, which seemed a little extreme, so I started in on the exciting world of alternative medicine and booked myself an appointment with an acupuncturist.

First visit included a variety of needles in my arms and legs, as well as one in my face (to help with sinus issues). Didn’t hurt at all, though some strange muscle pull-like feelings in my right arm. Very strange. Left forearm felt all burned/sensitive for a couple days, but when that went away, almost all the pain in my left arm was gone. Range of motion is much better, and the pain really is about the same as it was when I was on large doses of Prednisone. Good stuff. Went back again last week. Did the same spots for knee and elbow, as well as some work on my back. So far, I’m pleased with the results.

Otherwise, very little going on. Tried out a couple new restaurants, the highlight being the Vita Cafe, which is mostly vegan/vegetarian, but perversely managed to serve Eleanor the best hamburger she’s had since moving up here. I went for the vegan chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, and gravy, which was fantastic. They have a pretty fantastic menu of non-meat items, so I’m looking forward to going back there fairly regularly.

The Savoy Cafe was strange; I’ve read reviews that described it as gourmet Midwestern, which is accurate, I suppose, but it was a little bland even by Midwestern standards. The fried cheese curd appetizer was quite delicious (sort of tasted like a cross between mac and cheese and mozarrella sticks), but my entree of trout, sauteed root vegetables, and mac and cheese (I can’t really resist a side of mac and cheese if it’s offered) was disappointing. The trout was bland, which is unsuprising for trout, but I expected a little more seasoning. The mac and cheese was a little mealy and flavorless – not far off from the Howard Johnson’s frozen mac and cheese, really. The root vegetables were actually the highlight of the dish, which is a little troubling. Eleanor had a hamburger (again), which she said had good meat, but a lousy bun and flavorless cheese. I think we’re so accustomed to delicious Oregon cheese that the imported Wisconsin cheese just doesn’t cut it.

Movie-wise, been working through the Marx Brothers pre-Thalberg films (Animal Crackers, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup so far). I’m not sure why my dad didn’t have me watch more Marx Brothers stuff as a kid. We watched a fair bit of Three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy, but not sure I ever watched a Marx Brothers film with him. Surprising. Also watched Casino, which some critic thought was the best film ever, so we had to watch it. Really very odd. Not only is it virtually the exact same film as Good Fellas, but the first 100 minutes or so are shot as one would normally shoot a little introduction sequence – all action moved forward only by voiceover, length time gaps between scenes, heavy use of music. It took me about an hour to get into the rhythm, shortly after which they switch back to a more normal narrative structure to get to what I assume Scorcese thought was the heart of the story, i.e., DeNiro and Stone yelling at each other. Really not very good. Not sure what this guy was thinking.

Also watched Une Femme est une Femme, which isn’t on my list, but I’ve been enjoying all the Godard stuff so much, I figured I should get every Godard film I can from library. This one was fantastic (as they have all been). It makes excellent use of Michel Legrand’s score, so that every scene seems like the characters are about to burst into song, which they never do. Except for when the main character sings at her club, which is almost inaudible. Like all the Godard films we’ve seen so far (except maybe Le Mepris), Godard seems to be having so much fun making the film, it’s very hard not to smile the entire time (which may go against his desire to be a serious Marxist filmmaker, but still makes for some very enjoyable films).

Finally, watched the Superbowl on Sunday. Seattle was robbed.