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The window on the driver’s side of my car has come off of its track. This means that I’m going to have to take it in to get it fixed. Well, I do need an oil change, so I guess it will be good to kill two birds with one stone. However, I fear that in order to fix the window, they will need to take apart the door. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to afford this yet. Plus, I just passed 60,000 miles so it’s probably no longer under warranty. Suck.

Alright, my portal now works. It’ll open a little remote window that will control the content in this window. I’ll add more stuff to the portal as I see fit, but hey, it’s mainly for my use.

When I was in college, I lived in the Music House for most of my years there. One year there were about twelve of us living there, and we decided to get a Music House tee-shirt. The best suggestion we had was a rip-off of Nike:

JUST DO ME

I adjusted the name of this page to be grammatically correct in French. Thanks go to Dan for pointing that out. Merci! (I really don’t know any French — I was just modeling my site after the painting by René Magritte. Of course it’s not a pipe — it’s a painting.)

Today, I actually had time to play some music with Bryan. He had learned Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun previously on bass so we played through that. Then we took some time to learn the first half of Shine on You Crazy Diamond. (These are both Pink Floyd songs.) Pretty awesome.

Well, some good news came out of my meeting on Saturday. First of all, there’s going to be a bit of restructuring within our department. Several more people will be hired for the fall. Also, I asked for something I should have a long time ago — a raise. I asked and I received.

I am working on a new design, so what you’re seeing now is a preview. If you have any comments, don’t hesitate to email me.

HERE I AM
I’m sitting here at work here on a Saturday because we’re supposed to have a department meeting. I drove an hour and a half to get here because this is the only time when everyone can get together at the same time (because of the hectic summer tours). This better be worth the three hours I’ll be spending in my car. We’re still missing people.

MESSNER

I just arrived home from seeing Roger Waters perform at Madison Square Garden. The seats we (Bryan and I) had were alright — down on the floor but a little far back.

The show was pretty much a total sensory experience:

SOUND
Of course, you go to a concert, you’re going to hear music. There was lots of it. And it was beautiful. Roger and his band understand how to craft songs in a way to make them not just songs, but complete soundscapes. They played some classics from Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall and some of Roger’s own newer stuff. The treat of the evening was Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. The speakers were set up quadrophonically, so if you were sitting in the right spot, you would hear different things coming from different directions. Unfortunately, we weren’t stting in the sweet spot, but it was still rather cool.

VISUAL
Behind the enourmous stage was a screen on which images were projected. They used four projectors to create a composite image on this screen. The imagery that is associated with the music is very original and innovative. If you’ve ever seen the movie The Wall, you’ll understand how important imagery and symbolism are to Roger Waters’ music. We were a bit far from the stage, and when you’re in an arena like the Garden, it’s good to have some sort of large projection.

SMELL
It wasn’t exactly smell-o-vision, but you could always tell what plant the people around you were smoking. One guy asked me if I had a joint to sell him.

TOUCH
I was standing up for the entire concert, which meant through the weight of my body and the sticky substances on the floor, my shoes would get stuck. Maybe I’m reaching here?

TASTE
Well, I wasn’t directly involved with this, but Bryan bought a hot dog before the show. There you go, total sensory experience.