So yeah... a fire alarm.

A whopping 40 minutes ago (pending, ofc, when this post is concluded), we were ushered out of the building by the annoying 1-2-3-rest pattern of blaring klaxons from the fire alarms. I'm not really privy to exactly what happened, but it wasn't a real fire, and it certainly wasn't a drill. In fact, I wasn't even really ushered out of the building. Maybe I should start over.

Cranky, RobHack and I decided to walk down to the store for some food. We're not really into meal definitions here; we might have called it 'lunch' except that it was almost 5pm. Whatever... when we got back, we were met with an annoying trill and watching people pour out of our building. Quick check: cellphone, wallet, keys? D'oh, no keys. Cranky was brave enough to go on in and get them for me, as well as whatever he grabbed for himself. A few minutes later, the firetruck rolled on in and within a minute or two, the "all clear" was announced. Back to work.

Except, they didn't turn off the alarm. It took another 15 minutes or so to get that turned off (really, I have no concept of time). So now everyone's running around with that faux excitement, when really, they should just get back to it. Or go home. I mean really... it's 5pm on the Friday before a three-day weekend.

The gall of some people... wait, I'm still here. D'oh!

Come to find out, <Pure actually had a show tonight. Well, a few hours ago (so that would be the 29th) anyway. I had called the drummer, Turtle to see when they were going to be playing again, but he sounded really skeptical about this show, and was more inclined to point me towards the show that Verdigris (my band) will be playing with them at. Ofc, I had to tell him about how my girlfriend and I have had their song stuck in our heads ever since the show. He was really excited about that and said that he just had to tell Jeremy about it.

And so then tonight comes along. It was about 6 o'clock and Jeremy calls me. First off, I had no idea he knew my number, but since we're all kinda together and friends of friends, it doesn't take much thought to see how he might have managed to get ahold of me... anyway. He lets me know that they are indeed on for 10pm. Well, that's rather short notice. See, from where we live, it requires a nice 30m ferry ride to get over to Seattle, and that's excluding the 20ish minutes to get to the ferry terminal, await a sailing, and then whatever drive there might be to find where <Pure would be playing...

So, I thanked him, hoping we would be able to make it. Due to work, however, this simply wasn't possible... Luckily, there's only 11 days left until we see them again for sure, and now, they know to let us know of any impromptu shows they might get.

Today is the 5 year anniversary of Judgement Day - the day heralded in T2 to be the day that SkyNet became self-aware.

I realize I am a total and utter geek for knowing such things... What's worse is that on August 29th, 1997, it was my roommate's 21st birthday. We celebrated like it was the end of the world...

"You were always there, just beyond my stare. If I'd only knew... I've fallen into you."

It's still there. In my head. Driving me insane. I came to find out last night that my girlfriend has also had the same song stuck in her head since we saw <PURE play. I wonder if it has anything to do with me humming it...

So, we're seriously considering an emergency trip to Seattle as soon as we can find out when <Pure is playing again.

I think I have their drummer's number on my cell...

And that's that. I've gotten my newest template put up.

The cycling colors of the old template (one provided from the nice people at Blogger) were pretty cool, I must admit. After a couple hours of flailing with stylesheets, I was unable to adapt the stylesheet driven layout and JavaScript controlled colorshifting to my new template... at least not in a way that pleased me much.

I'm more of an old-school webdesigner. I find I'm rather stuck in the stone-age of html and design. As I was telling Cranky the other day, I think my dislike of scripting, xml, flash and css all stems from the fact that as a minority user (MacOS & Netscape) I've always hated those sites that didn't load for me, or were otherwise crippled in design because some lazy designer just couldn't be bothered to adapt the design across more browsers and platforms than the latest and greatest from Micro$oft.

Note: I've not had a chance to test my latest template in either Netscape, nor on a Mac, so I very well might be a complete hypocrite at this point... but I'm fairly certain that at least the table layout will be the same, and if css standards are what I hear they're supposed to be, maybe the page will look the same overall. I dare to dream.

Oh, and I still have that <Pure song stuck in my head. It's going to be a long 15 days...

I have a song stuck in my head. It happens a lot, and I'm sure all of you can think of at least one song that easily gets stuck in your head (ha! take that!). Usually the best remedy that I have found for dealing with this sort of menace is to actually just listen to the song... maybe even a few times in a row, at which point your primal desire to drive yourself insane is satiated, or you're just sick of the tune. Either way, it won't be in your head anymore.

With the advent of mp3's, filesharing, and searching mechanisms, quickly obtaining music is really not much of a problem. Even if you're a die-hard believer in the rights of recording artists, it's an easy temporary fix that you can purge afterwards. I'm sure the RIAA wouldn't be too offended by that.

My problem, however, is that the song I have in my head is (to the best of my knowledge) not yet recorded. As I stated in an earlier entry, Saturday my band played in New Castle (close enough to Renton for anyone who cares) with another band, <Pure, and a solo-act from Calvin. <Pure (yes, "less... than... pure...") was kind enough to get the song formerly titled "Jeremy" stuck in my head. Jeremy (the guitarrist, not the song) wrote the song, and has recently changed the title to something like "Hidden Message", but I'm not 100% sure.

Heh, 100% sure... <Pure... Yeah, anyway. So, I can't get a copy of the song, and the next time I'm going to hear it isn't until the 10th of September. "I've fallen into you!"

It's 8pm. It's Friday night. And I'm still at work...

Anyway, tomorrow evening, my band, Verdigris, is playing in Renton. That's right, Al. My band. =]

I haven't really divulged too much about myself so far in Mr. Blog here, and I think I'll just continue that trend, dropping bits and pieces as we go so that if anyone does become a semi-consistent reader (or at least a snooper of archives), they'll get to know as much as my parents do. Probably more.

I just saw the coolest website... but I feel I need to offer a disclaimer first.

My girlfriend recently graduated with a degree in Mortuary Science. In fact, just yesterday I took her to two funeral homes in West Seattle for interviews. She and I have talked about options for the bereaved on more than one occasion. Obviously there's burial and cremation, but beyond that, you can be put into space or now, even turned into a diamond! That is so cool.

I still want to be launched into the sun...

So, I finally gave in. Crankydoodle has been harping on me for months to get off my duff and start a blog. He said it was really easy, and it was, I'll admit that...

But, why? Why was he so desperate to get me started on my own blog? It's not like I'm that utterly fascinating or anything. I just like designing web pages. Fiddling with layout, color... you know, that kind of crap.

I guess I just hated the maintenance back from the old days (link ommitted for good reason) when I had a "blog" (back before there was such a thing, I think) reviewing every movie I saw.

Anyway... now I've started another blog. Let's see how long this one lasts. At least now I have some place to brag when I whoop his sorry @$$ at table-tennis. =]