RIP Dan Fogelberg, singer-songwriter

Dead at 56 of prostate cancer.

"His best-remembered songs include his biggest hit, the affecting ballad "Longer" ... ; "Leader of the Band," a tribute to his bandleader father, Lawrence; and the evergreen seasonal standard "Same Old Lang Syne," which originally hit the top 10 in 1980." USA Today obit. They missed "Rhythm of the Rain."

"Leader of the Band" is one of the very finest of the tributes song genre. Gives me chills.

Rest well, Dan Fogelberg. Thanks for the songs.

"Worst Keynote Evar"

That was one chatter's opinion. I don't know yet. I have to watch the stream. I listened to an audio feed and I've seen the promo bits at Apple.com. The translucent menu bar is just crazy. That they made the menu's less translucent has to say something. In fact, I think the Mac OS X menus have become more opaque since 10.0. Anyway, I wasn't blown away because eight of the ten features shown at the keynote were shown at WWDC in 2006. Has the iPhone sucked up that many resources at Apple?

I've read the Safari 3 beta for Windows runs on W2K as well as XP & Vista. I'll have to try it out there. I will say it's dramatically faster on Tiger than Safari 2 or the "webkit nightlies" I've used until Camino 1.5 hit the streets. Clearly there's been a lot more performance available on older hardware but software just hadn't been sufficiently tuned. I will say Apple's been pretty good at that. Each Mac OS X major update has improved performance. I was among those disappointed there were no hardware updates.

I was fill-in DJ last night. My song choices got good reviews. I wasn't totally happy with two or three but overall it worked out. There were some technical hiccups early and then about three quarters through the show there was an encoding incompatibility which blew things up for a bit but nothing I couldn't handle. This was a good thing since I was the support staff for my show.

Picking songs for others entertainment is more difficult than for your own and the licensing scheme brings legal limitations about how often an artist can be played, not using multiple tracks from a single album, the hour delay before playing requests... and so forth. It's been an interesting experience and taxing in different ways.

I want to thank Leon for tuning in during work although he sacrificed chance at a lunch other than ramen to do so.

Since I didn't sleep much yesterday, I'm exhausted. However, I'm loathe to turn in just yet. My eyes ache with tireness so I may not have much say in the matter of staying up a few more hours. I still need to double-check on the meat recall expansion. Grr. That can wait for another day.

Must Be A Monday

I went to bed early last night because my eyes felt like they wanted to pop from my skull and roll down the road. Feeling better this morning. Yay me. There wasn't rain over night. Big surprise. Supposedly rain will come tonight instead. We'll see.

I called my old neighbor Sunday evening. There was a remarkable lack of energy in his voice. He asked me to step in when I come up to the Brother's house next. Could happen Today.

Brother emailed late telling me about the house destruction on-going. I guess laminated wood flooring is going in the Master instead of the carpet I bought on the estate's behalf. As part of a Caribbean theme, the walls are as bright aqua blue.

He asked me if I'd like to help tear down the wall Father built to solve an echo problem in the dining room. With the dining carpet gone and being replaced with more of the tile I put throughout the hallways and kitchen you can be sure any echo problem will be back with a vengeance. It'll be even more significant if they do remove the popcorn acoustic ceiling texture. It's an ugly look but serves a function. I have 10 ft ceilings at the apt and no acoustic texture. There is some echo but it doesn't bother me. With squealing kids, I'd be one badly frayed nerve.

The tile laying is being tossed to a dad for one of SIL's old childcare gigs. He'll probably be building the pantry as well. He needs work.

I seem more sensitive to sounds, the abrasiveness of so much music these days is like being run back-and-forth across a cheese grater. I've sought refuge with Radio Disney streaming for now. Black-Eyed-Peas up now with "Let's Get It Started." "Let's get ig'nant?" I had to look that up. Supposedly it's akin to "unplugging" and "zoning out" while dancing rather than a repudiation of knowledge. I wonder what level of penetration the meaning gets with listeners. Talking of double-meanings, "YMCA" now playing on Radio Disney! Hilarious!!

I'd always taken the song "YMCA" at face value. I also loathed literary analysis in school but I'm digressing. I tend to do that a lot with things which is probably why I just assume "it's all lies" now as a defense mechanism. Readers of this blog have probably heard the stories that "YMCA" is really about gay men "hooking up."

I just had the cat blog reading. She barfed on the carpet over-night. The food wasn't digested. That's the second time since we moved, not bad for her.