Tuesday morning, from the city market

Friday night we went to the Not So Silent Night Concert. Big venue: the Bill Graham Civic Center Auditorium. Presented by a radio station, lots of 16-year olds. Lots of bands, they played for about 45 minutes each.

Muse was loud but not very special. The Killers were loved by the audience, but could not entertain us much.

Interpol

Interpol was very good. The played lots of their new album, a few songs from the first album. They did not wait at all between songs so they played as much as they could.

Franz Ferdinand

Franz Ferdinand played very good as well. Last band to play was Modest Mouse. Sadly, we saw that they put at least two people in the audience to sleep.

Saturday night we went to see The Hives. This fun punk rock band from Sweden played in The Warfield on Market Street in San Francisco. A great place, PJ played here a few weeks ago. Of course, dinner at Tu Lan

Opening bands were The Deadly Snakes and The Bronx. The Bronx played a twisted kind of hardcore skate punk. They ended their set by impaling the snaredrum on a drumset stand. No other casualties.

Everybody came for The Hives. The place was packed. They entered the stage in black and white suits, matching the white amplifiers and black and white instruments. The Hives played very very well. They enjoyed themselves being back in San Francisco, calling everybody damn hippies. Multiple injuries from flying drum sticks, fatalaties avoided when lead singer tried to climb stack of speakers.

Check them out when they come to town!

For quite a while now we have heard of the legions of Zombie PC’s that are being harnessed by hackers and possibly spammers. These are trojan infected PC’s whose owners do not know how (or do not particularly care) to protect their machines.

Technology advances. Even now scientists are working on ways to interface a person’s brain directly to a computer. This technology is hoped to provide treatment for (among other things) paraplegics and quadraplegics, but I am sure that off-shoot technology will someday simply provide a faster, personal interface to the internet and better storage and retreival of information for the everyday Joe.

This is the same everyday Joe that allows their PC to become so malware infested and ‘0wn3d’ that we use the term zombie to describe it. What happens when a small percentage of people depend on these machines to control their limbs or remember things for them? Will we face a new threat from what amounts to actual zombies?

Baby bear was just strolling along, while we were in the skilift this weekend, skiing at Heavenly.

Thanks Olivier, for taking this picture and sending it to Sky Full Of Fish!

We’re very lucky some good music came to town. And it keeps on going! Next Saturday we’re seeing The Hives

They’re a great band and are coming to San Francisco again! Last time they were here people were trading their Pixies tickets for Hives tickets (that says something).

Another surprise was denis’ birthday present from friends at work (thanks Zach, Scott, Hiro, Andy): two tickets for the Not So Silent Night. And it’s this Friday night!!

A whole bunch of cool bands, unbelievable! Interpol, Franz Ferdinand, Modest Mouse, and even Muse

Next weekend is going to be busy, this weekend too, on the South Lake Tahoe ski slopes.

Ok, ok, we went to see PJ Harvey end of October, and it’s December now already. We know, we’re slowpokes.

The concert was great, PJ was really good. The place was packed but we were able to get close to the stage.

Here’s an older picture of Polly Jean:

From the newsgroup ba.food:

The media-fueled rage for Turducken seems to have subsided without my ever getting to try one. Am thinking of ordering one for the Holidays.

Another reader replied:

Can’t help you with a source for turducken, but you might want to consider ratspidum, a possum stuffed with a rat and a spider. It’s a bit more festive, and the food media have yet to discover it.