The dancing in Mamma Mia! was somewhat mediocre, but the cast sang well, and the audience was well entertained.

National Arts Centre Southam Hall, December 27, 2007

All that aside, I took advantage, like a vulture, of the discounts at MusicWorld to pick-up Sea Change by Beck, Exit by K-Os, Transatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie, and The Spaghetti Incident by Guns N’ Roses. Got ‘em home, popped into the computer → ripped to flac (for home listening and archiving) → replaygain → convert to AAC for ipod → add album art. Done!

It’s a good time to pick up those cds and dvds that you’ve been meaning to get, so get out there and support the record industry! :mrgreen:
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Now playing on foobar2000: Death Cab for Cutie – [Transatlanticism #05] The Sound of Settling
via FoxyTunes

pedwar’s mom went to the hospital by ambulance in the wee hours of the morning and is still there for observation and might face surgery soon. Obviously, this is placing some strain on the family. Her Dad is ever confused and forgetful of recent events so not having his wife around is tough, even though he’s not being left alone.

On the upside, the I met a few worthy candidates as I conducted interviews all day long. There were some real duds, but thankfully there were some potential diamonds in the rough, too.

Back to CD Warehouse…

I found the new Travelling Wilbury’s Collection set, which contains the Vol. 1 and Vol. 3 albums as well as new DVD content. The CDs, which have been out of print for over a decade offer some new content as well as being “remastered”. I’ll have to find sometime to watch the DVD.

Pedwar’s mom is spending the night in the hospital, which isn’t as bad as it might sound. Not only is she being watched and checked, but she’s also being given serious pain killers so she’s comfy, unlike the last couple of weeks during which she’s been in serious discomfort. Also, she has an ultrasound planned, which might result in her surgery being moved up from September. The surgery should fix all of the current problems and allow her to start enjoying life at the residence.

Despite two days of solid interviewing this week, we still have a ton more to do and based on the experience so far, it will be fatiguing. Listening to the ‘good ones’ isn’t too bad, but having to take copious notes sucks. As for the ‘bad ones’, its all I can do to keep from telling them to stop wasting our time. I’m just thankful that I have great colleagues who did all the pre-interview assessments and continue to carry the load of the paperwork.

I also grabbed Tom Waits’ multi-disk set from last year, Orphans, which comprises one disk named ‘Brawlers’, one named ‘Bawlers’, and one named ‘Bastards’. I like all the Tom Waits I’ve ever heard and have heard nothing but good about this collection so I grabbed it, too. He’s off the wall and unique so if you’re a Ricky Martin/Britney/Rhiana fan, please look elsewhere. The last two finds were in the used section and took the form of two Eagles compilations — Their Greatest: 1971-1975 and Greatest Hits Volume 2.

We should have some clarity on what will happen with pedwar’s mom tomorrow. Hopefully, its good news to offset the pain of Western themed Stag & Doe for Aaron and Brianna tomorrow night. They are a great couple and I like them a lot, but why inflict such pain on the friends and family your purport to care about??? Line dancing! It’s madness! I am SO glad I was pedwar’s second husband, I can’t do the feeling of relief justice in words…

I’m currently listening to ‘Brawlers’ on my headphones and ripping the content of the new acquisitions to FLAC and converting to AAC for the iPod. All in all, a nice way to end a mixed day for us. Let’s hope tomorrow is all good (problem free for surgery for ped’s mom, my parents have a good day at the cottage, Narv sells some cars, I beat Mike at tennis, and no emergencies from work).

Getting the little black box to hook on to the wirless LAN was also stupidly easy. At power-up, it guides the user through a number of choices that require that you know some basic things about your home LAN, such as whether you’re using DHCP or static IP addressing. If you’re sufficiently in the know to be buying one of these things, then you should know that at a minimum. You should also know whether you’re using encryption and the encryption key (both 64-bit and 128-bit WEP are supported). In my case it was DHCP with 128-bit WEP so I fed it the code, added the Squeezebox’s MAC address to my WAP’s “allowed list” and it connected quickly and easily. Installing the SlimServer software on my Fedora 7 box was also similarly easy. Download the rpm, rpm -ivh, address any dependencies with yum, and you’re good to go. Time invested? About 15 minutes.

The device’s interface is intuitive and highly configurable so I’ll probably be playing with it for weeks before I settle on the best set-up, but for now, its made our entire music library accessible from the bedroom, independent of what is playing on the Rotel system in the basement. For the price, you can’t beat it.

If only I could afford the Transporter for the Rotel/B&W system…