Shay’s Blog

Cirque du Soleil is here in Dallas.  Alicia and I have tickets for this Saturday’s (February 24, 2007) show.  We are both looking forward to the show.  We went to a very fun and interesting Cirque du Soleil event on Saturday at Borders.  The artistic directory of Corteo, Richard Dagenais, the main character, Jeff Raz, and one of the acrobats, Rebecca Jose spoke at the event.

Both Alicia and I really enjoyed hearing them speak.  I was amazed at what Rebecca Jose said.  She was formerly a rhythm gymnastic.  She auditioned for cirque.  Rebecca then spent a year learning to “fly”.  She described her main routine is being thrown between two men that are six meters apart which is almost 20 feet.  I cannot wait to see her routine.

Richard Dagenais was very well spoken.  I think his native language his French.  I got the impression he was French-Canadian.  The cirque shows sound very well run.  Of course you never know till you experience something like that from the inside.  I do know they are under a phenomenal amount of pressure.  Be sure to check out the series that originally aired on Bravo called “The Fire Within” which chronicled the preparation of another cirque show called Varekai.

I got my IRS tax refund last week.  I had said I was going to get a macbook pro with part of the refund.  The refund made me hit another financial milestone.  Ever since I bought my townhouse, my net worth exclusive off the house and car was negative.  It always bothered me that me when I looked at my net work on Fidelity, it showed negative.  I would know that really was not at a negative net work, but it was nevertheless bothersome.  Well as February 16, 2007 this is no longer the case.  This event caused me to rethink the timing of my macbook pro purchase.  I think I am going to wait till bonus time which is in August.  I will get a macbook pro then.  The timing works out better since leopard (Apple’s new operating system release) will be out by then.

My sporadically reported net work is:  assets are $55,111.78 higher than the same time last year, my liabilities are $9,392.17 lower than last year.  This brings my net worth $64,503.95 higher than the same time last year.  I am very happy which my progress so far.  I am still below my goals that I set at the end of last year, but I think as the year goes on, I will be to meet my goals.

Peter Gabriel is one of my favorite musicians.  He is celebrating his birthday 57th birthday today, February 13.  Happy Birthday Peter!  His music is absolutely brilliant.  His live shows are even better.  If you ever get a chance to see him perform, I would highly recommend going to him.  Unfortunately his tour schedule is like is album releases which are spaced very far apart.

This is the 100th posting to my blog.  I started blogging here on my site in August 2006.  I started blogging on myspace in October of 2005.  The experience has been fun and very much a learning experience.  I know I can definitely say my writing has gotten a lot better since I started.  Blogging has also helped me learn more about myself.  I am looking forward to continuing this learning experience.  I hope my readers have enjoyed my writing.

On the subject of my life, Alicia and I went to see a couple of movies this weekend at the Angelika.  We went to see Babel on Saturday afternoon.  We have been meaning to go see it for a while now, but the times never worked for us.  I really enjoyed it.  I enjoy stories that are loosely connected.  It presented some dark subject matters and some very thought provoking current issues.  The movie really bothered Alicia.

Today we went to Flannel Pajamas.  It was a very well done movie that tells the story of a modern couple in New York City meeting, falling in love, moving in together, and getting married.  The movie definitely gives you a very frank and personal view of their relationship.  It was not sugar coated or given the Hollywood treatment of their relationship.  The movie was written and directed by Jeff Lipsky.  He has directed one other movie that I have not heard of before called Childhood’s End.  I look forward to seeing more of his work.

The guys at firebug released 1.0.1. Here are the release notes:
1. Support escaping the % sign in console.log() calls using %%
2. Support “Find Next” in the CSS tab
3. Fixed problem causing inconsistent breakpoint triggering
4. Deleting a disabled CSS property will work properly
5. Fixed bug that prevented editing of DOM properties with numeric values
6. Inserted warning about incompatibility with Sothink SWF Catcher extension
7. Fixed incompatibility with HTML Validator extension

The incompatibility with HTML Validator fix is much welcomed.

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I just discovered iConcertCal which is a very cool plug-in for iTunes. It scans your iTunes library and then compiles concert listings in your area. It uses your the location associated with your public ip address, but you can easily change this. The ability to change the default location was important for me since my public ip is located in Virginia.

This plug-in differs from tourfilter which is an online tour tracking site. Tourfilter you have to set up the bands you want to track. iConcertCal uses your iTunes library so you get up and running a lot quickly with iConcertCal. You can add additional bands to track in iConcertCal that are not in your library, but unfortunately this feature is not working in windows. I did not find a way in iConcertCal to filter out any bands in your library that do not want to know about. Tourfilter also has an advantage that it is viewable on any web browser while you have to view the iConcertCal via iTunes. Tourfilter also emails you new listings. There is another key difference between the products. iConcertCal uses the bands’ websites to get its data from which it updates weekly. Tourfilter uses local listings which it seems to poll daily.

In summary if you use iTunes, you can get going really quickly with iConcertCal since you do not have to enter much data. If you do mind setting your band watch list, then tourfilter gives you a lot more functionality and flexibility for concert listings. You can easily use both products too like I do. You can view my concert listings from tourfilter here.

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I apparently cannot tax plan worth a damn. I did my taxes last weekend and low and behold I am getting more than six thousand dollar refund. I know it is nice to get a refund especially one that is that large, but if you think about it, you are getting your money returned to you. You gave a loan to the US government which is interest free. (more…)