Your Opinion Is Wrong™

I just learned today that the CEO of PC Tools is named Simon. Shudder. It's rather disturbing how Insight is affecting my perception of the entire universe even approaching a full year of working elsewhere.

However, I learned that THIS Simon was responsible for establishing the site www.regedit.com way back in '98, before he started PC Tools (a useful site for anyone interested in messing with their windows registry, for those of you giving blank stares), which I recognised from the days when I were more inclined to break things in my UI.

Of course, it's no longer at www.regedit.com, but rather www.winguides.com. I just like being redundant, difficult and a big waste of time all at once, dammit.

I also like links.

Ask yourself these two questions!

1)Want to play fundamentally simple flash games that also challenge your masculinity?

2)Even if you're female?

3)This is not a question! Click here!

Taken from today's page at Something Awful

"Stormtroopers, let's get out of here! They seem to be concentrating all their fire on the walls and ceiling, so if we stick to the floor we should be okay."

Bwahahahaa.

I finally nailed a job. I'll be working as a customer service representative for PC Tools (a spyware thingy).

The catch is while their call centre is running 24 hours, they only have available positions for their emailing helpdesk folk. Not that doing the customer service thing exclusively by email is a catch, but their main customer base is located in the USA, which means my working hours'll be from 11pm to 8 am. Dag-nabbit.

I'll takes what I cans gets but I think I'm going to try crawling around to other positions as soon as possible.

Who'd have thought I'd go crawling back to telemarketing?

I've been applying for more jobs than I can count, and I've had two get back to me for an interview, but with no success. I'll be calling CCA up shortly to see if I can get a job there while I look for something else. It's 4 hours a day at CCA, or a drive out to Blacktown for 8 hours a day for essentially half the pay. Plus, there's the ability to read on the job.

I've been finding out as much as I can about soundproofing, too. Gotta set up a space for zee band to make noises.

Saturday night (the main reason I'm posting) was quite groovy. The Tucker B's were supporting some band (Gerber? Gerbil? Gopher?) at some dance-oriented bar at Darling Harbour. A bit of an odd choice, given that the Tuckers are basically Indie-Rockers who think it's usually best to scream lyrics out a few feet from the mic. Between sets, people would actually dance on the dancefloor to the music that was playing. Has to be seen to be believed. They seemed to dig the Tuckers though. Particularly the vocalist's sound-checking ettiquette:

'Hey, can I have less drums in my fallback, please?'

*pause*

Then, for no apparent reason,

'...You fucking bastard...'

Here be pic-a-tures.

This is Darren, the band member with a rather impressive beard. He's also one of the guitarists, and a good guitarist he be, but the beard thing is of more importance. Hard to tell here, but they're all wearing funny robes with PVC skirts over the top. And headbands with little red lights on them (possibly so you can see where they are even when they're in the dark).

During the final song, Darren ended up sort of lying on top of Matt (the lead vocalist/guitarist). I would describe it as a sort of piggyback, since Matt was still technically standing up (bent over) but Darren was sort of spreadeagled on top of Matt, so I guess I won't. I bring this up because they were doing this while playing their instruments (impressive AND hilarious!) but I didn't happen to get a picture of it. If they do it the next time Sarah and I see them, I'll be ready. Heh, heh.

Here be their bass player, Carlos, in his natural habitat (that is, screaming his lungs out into a mic which is often positioned, more or less, in front of him)


I took more, but those are pretty much the only 'decent' pics...yes, I was using my phone to take them.

They also had their drummer from Perth (who's quite insanely fast, so any pictures I took of him were too blurry, confound it). Second best live drummer I've seen, behind The Dirty Three's drummer.

For this next part, I'm going to have to admit that I like the Tea Party. And before anyone comments, I'll just give you a pre-emptive 'upside yer head!'

I have had their version of 'Paint It Black' on my PC for a while, and I liked it. I knew it was a cover, but didn't know who did the original (been a while since I heard it, ja?), so I decided to soulseek it up. Among realising that covers have been done by Black Dahlia Murder, U2, The Unseen, Gob, The Agony Scene, Metallica, Incubus Succubus, The Animals (yes, the band with Eric Burdon, no less...a weird psychadelic jammy thing attached to the end of the song takes it past the five-minute mark), Los Mockers, Judas Priest, Hrvatski, Groin, Firewater, Face To Face, Band Of Susans, Vanessa Carlton (groan) Deranged (early 90's death metal...their version is actually quite funny, but it's probably not intentional), The Agony Scene (another metal band who actually did a GOOD job metal-ising the song, even though I don't like most of their own stuff), Deep Purple, The Avengers, Type O Negative, and some band called Wasp, I learned that the original was by the Rolling Stones. Hooray. By the way, all that was just the stuff I downloaded. I checked out a listing on wikipedia and I'd estimate that there's at least twice as many versions out there...until next time, folks.

edit - Sarah pointed out that Carlos is in fact named Andrew. I couldn't remember what his name was, so I used the interweb to find out. That'll learn me to use their official website to obtain information about the band again.