Van Halen's Pitch Nightmare

Found on Fark, and coming to us from the musically-inclined RW370, we have what seems to be an awesome closing song for Van Halen's set: The ultra-classic 80s anthem "Jump." The only trouble is, the dub track containing the keyboards (played by Eddie, and since he can't do that and play guitar live, well, you know...) is going too bloody fast, about 1.5 semitones sharp and at 48K (instead of the normal 44.1K, or CD quality speed). The result?

Well, Eddie is hunting for notes on the guitar, trying to compensate on the fly, but to no avail: The pitch difference doesn't allow for a guitar to hit ANY proper notes, making Eddie come off like he's a bit flat. Alex has no problem, drums aren't dependent on tonal structures as much as other instruments. Diamond Dave has no problems, either: It's relatively easy for a singer to change key on the spot, all you have to do is hear the notes being played, and adjust accordingly. Justin and I do that all the time with certain Karaoke tracks at the Avenue.

I'm not too worried about the bass player, since he's just a replacement for Mike anyway. Mike's off working with Sammy Hagar as far as I know. In the end, Greensboro, NC got their money's worth until the very end. Can't blame the band, really, it's out of their hands. Sound guy? Yeah, bet he got a bitching at after the show.

Let it be known that I love Van Halen, and I feel their pain on this particular issue. I'm sure it'll be ironed out and the rest of the "reunion" tour will be awesome...

Service Pack = DOOM

Just got off the phone with a Hewlitt-Packard tech support dude, and he just let me in on a little secret: Once Micro$oft finally patches Vista with it's next service pack (which, it's rumored, will make Vista WORK for a change), it will discontinue support for all previous versions of Windows from XP on down.

Yep, it's either Use Vista or Fend For Yourself.

Micro$oft has yet to make any sort of release on this subject, but if an internal tech support guy at HP is in the know, then it won't be long before the rest of us find out.

And boy, are there going to be alot of pissed off people who refuse to get Vista and like XP/98/whatever...

The Sun Is The Same In A Relative Way

Here's some nifty video for you all, found initially via Fark, but since discovered on YouTube after some digging. OK, so maybe not digging so much as it was a one-shot YT search using Firefox's most awesome search box, but still.

This is our sun, known officially as Sol, as it looked to the SOHO spacecraft's UV camera. It shows one full rotation of our mighty star, which takes about 25 days to complete. You can clearly see different regions of temperature and light emission, as well as a couple of really nifty surface explosions that eject solar stuff into the space around it. Pretty damned wicked if you ask me. Original article here...

And you all thought science was boring. Here's A Link to the original MPEG file, just in case you'd like to see it...

Get Off My Lawn 2.0

So, how do you tell kids to get off your lawn when you're an older nerd? You don't: You build something to keep them at bay in a fun and entertaining way. Say hello to the WaterHobo...

Now that's what I need! But not for keeping kids off my lawn, just messing with people...

Hi Mom

My mom does this stuff, so she'll get a kick out of this My Way article. Snigger snigger, chuckle, ROTFLMAO. Fark Thread...

Direct-marketing firm Quixtar Inc., a sister company of Amway Corp., has sued 30 people who anonymously posted what it considers disparaging remarks about Quixtar in blogs and online forums and in YouTube.com videos.

Hey, Quixtar/Amway: Here's some disparaging remarks for you... QUIXTAR FUCKING SUCKS! Sue me, bitches...