Hip Bent

Saw a great concert last night. The Tragically Hip! The show was at GMplace, and it was great. I wasn’t feeling all too great while waiting for them to start, and the opening band I really didn’t care for. I would even go so far as to say that they sucked!

The Hip though, were magnificent. They played a combination of new stuff, and a lot of older stuff. I much prefer their older material. To me their past couple releases have had a lot of songs that sound very similar. Their newest releases have felt very flat to me.

The sound was pretty good, but I felt that the mix was a little off. I someimes found it difficult to hear Gord Downie over the rest of the band, especially when he went off on a rant (which he did a few times). I was happy to see that Mr. Downie hasn’t changed much on stage. He is still as strange as ever! His antics up there were priceless. I remember one time I saw them in concert he was riding his mic stand like it was a horse. He rode it so hard that he bent the thing and a rodaie had to bring him a new one for the next song!

In that respect he really hasn’t changed. At times he looked like he was in the middle of some bizzarre seizure. Ahh, good Canadian boys!

After the concert we headed back to Suede’s moms place, and then this morning (after getting too few hours of sleep), we hopped back on the ferry and came home. Whirlwind trip to Vancouver, but as usual, it was fun!

The set list (from thehip.com)
Vaccination Scar
Grace, Too
Poets
It’s A Good Life If You Don’t Weaken
Summer’s Killing Us
Courage
Bobcaygeon
Nautical Disaster
It Can’t Be Nashville Every Night
Boots Or Hearts
Inevitability Of Death
Gus: The Polar Bear From Central Park
At The Hundredth Meridian
As Makeshift As We Are
Springtime In Vienna
Goodnight Josephine
My Music @ Work
New Orleans Is Sinking

1st Encore:
You’re Everywhere
Ahead By A Century
Blow At High Dough

2nd Encore:
Fully, Completely
Heaven Is A Better Place Today

Donation Pie

I got that warm and fuzzy feeling

Mmmm, pie!??! Last night Suede and I donated blood again. Blood donation 23 for me! It was a little more time consuming this time due to our recent travels to Mexico (and the accompanying vaccination we got). In the end we got through, donated our blood, then moved on to the cookie table where the volunteers were serving pie! I had never seen this before but some of the local businesses sometimes donate food for the donaters. The volunteer told us how the Subway close by once donated sub sandwiches all night long. Very cool.

After our recuperation period, we went out for dinner to Yoshi Sushi.

Donate blood today!

Oak Memory

loverly fall colors

Sunday the photo club met in Oak Bay for our shoot. It took me a few minutes to get into shooting, but once I got on a roll, I ended up with some great shots. I practiced a new handheld technique to try and get better, more in focus pitures. On most digital cameras there ia a high speed mode. I shot using that most of the day, and certainly noticed that of the sequence shots I took, some were more in focus than others. Some even dramatically so! Very cool. Downside is that it chews up the memory on the card. Ah well, time to buy a bigger card?

loverly fall leaf

The rest of my pics are here.

Restaurant Pictures

colorful leaves

This past weekend some of Suede’s family visited with us. As I mentioned in a previous post Friday we went out to our favorite restaurant, and as usual, it didn’t dissappoint. Well, I quite enjoyed my meal, but Suede and her step-mom were less than ecstatic about their dinner.

misty mountain

Saturday Suede, her step-mom, and I took Yoshi to Matheson Lake and did that jaunt in what seemed like record time. I still found time to take some pictures of the colored leaves. Yoshi of course loved the romp in the woods. The neat thing about that walk, like so many surrounding Victoria, is that you don’t see anyone else there. When we got to the parking lot there were no other vehicles, and when we were finished, there was one other vehicle there. Very nice considering it is about a 15-20 minute drive from our home.

colorful leaves

After the walk, we stopped for some food at My Chosen Cafe, then headed home to get cleaned up. Lovely start to the day.

Hour Version

tools for working

Well, I just spent the last hour or so doing some site upgrades. First I upgraded my Gallery version to it’s latest.

Then I spent a lot more time upgrading my version of Drupal to 4.5.0 There are some cool things about this new version, but once again I need to redo my theme. That is alway a pain in the ass. I think I got everything else upgraded and working again though. If I missed something, just shoot me an email.

Support Home

Aaaah. Long week at work. Thankfully I got a lot done this week despite working out bugs with support coming from India (12.5 hour time difference makes for difficulties in transferring information).

So now I sit here at my desk relaxing a little, enjoying a beer :guzzle:

Yum.

Must go home soon. Suede and I are heading out to our favorite restaurant for dinner with her Dad and step-mom.

Favorite Screeching

Halloween is Yoshi’s least favorite time of year. He really gets freaked out by the firecrackers screeching and exploding. One just went off outside, and Yoshi came running up to me, and crawled under the desk, and is laying at my feet right now. He seems to seek out enclosed areas for comfort.

Last night, when we went out, we brought Yoshi with us, but he stayed in the truck while we went trick or treating with friends’ kids. He was a little scared, and was shaking when we got back to the truck, but he wasn’t frantic. In fact, he was laying down the whole time.

Thankfully Halloween is over, so the noises should end pretty soon now. This will make Yoshi happy.