My dear cousin-in-law (arch nemesis) Mike made a comment today that he was having a KMFDM marathon. This reminded me of a period of my life around the age 20-22 when I subsequently lost all my KMFDM t-shirts. By “lost”, I mean “was robbed”.
A little back story here:
KMFDM is a German industrial band. They were formed in the mid 80′s and have since done something like 16 studio albums, with “Juke Joint Jezebel” being their most widely heard song, showing up on the big screen in both Bad Boys (featuring Martin Lawrence and The Fresh Prince) and Mortal Kombat (featuring Sub-Zero and Scorpion). I listened to them quite a bit during the 90s.
The thing about KMFDM is that they had EXCELLENT album covers.
my favorite design, now probably in the bottom drawer of some harlot's dresser
I thought these designs were superb and had a pretty good collection of black t-shirts featuring said artwork. Of course, the girls I dated also thought they were pretty cool. I noticed that slowly but surely my shirts would eventually end up in the clutches of these thieving women. By the time I hit 22, my collection had gone from maybe 6-8 different KMFDM shirts to 0! Of course my friends all thought this was tremendously funny. In fact, whenever they would see a girl wearing a KMFDM shirt they would ask them if they knew me.
A word of warning: UNLESS YOU ARE MARRIED TO THEM, DO NOT LET WOMEN BORROW YOUR FAVORITE SHIRTS!
Great new video from Imelda May’s upcoming album “Mayhem”. Now, the name of her album isn’t the only reason I’m posting this video. This woman absolutely rocks. Her debut album is superb and gets a lot of playtime in my car and at my desk. Unfortunately I missed her by a week when I was in Ireland (she played at the INEC right next to my hotel). I would love to see her play live. Unfortunately, she’s Irish and is typically playing the EU circuit.
Do yourself a favor and pick up her first album, Love Tattoo.
So with Apple and AT&T having issues with the iPhone pre-orders this morning, I decided to take a hop over to AT&T’s Facebook page and see if they had a statement. I was rewarded with seeing this little gem of a post:
Unless you understand networking, don’t talk about it. Having worked with my old school for 2 years and taking classes on it for all 4, I think I know what I’m talking about. You all don’t. Less qq.
This totally cracked me up. I really hope I never said anything when I was younger that sounded like this. I know I said a lot of stupid stuff, but I think I’ve always had a pretty good handle on my relative level of experience.
For those of you not in the know, “qq” is an emoticon for “crying”.
In case you weren’t aware, AT&T recently discontinued their “unlimited” data plan and introduced a tiered model. Under the new model, they’re offering 200MB for $15 a month and 2GB for $25. People with the existing unlimited plan will be able to keep their unlimited data plan. The stated reason for this was to require heavy users to pay more for their impact to the network. According to AT&T the “heavy users” take up around 2% of their customers.
While this sounds like a solid idea in theory, AT&T is facing a pretty substantial backlash. People see the unlimited option being taken away and instantly cry foul. Since you can remain grandfathered in on the unlimited plan, the users AT&T are looking to control with this pricing will not be impacted. They can just continue to use as much data as they like for $30 a month. So the net-net is AT&T gets negative press AND they don’t fix the problem they were supposedly trying to do. From a marketing perspective, this was a really bad move.
EAVB_XWEEQLJRIA
I admit, the switch to the iPad 3G data plan a month after release does stink a bit of “bait and switch”. Part of the draw of the 3G data plan was that you could stop and start it at any time and get unlimited data for $30. They’ve now changed their pricing. This seems unethical and leaves a bad taste in my mouth towards AT&T.
Realistically though, I will most likely switch to the $25 a month plan, since according to the usage statistics on my phone, I have used a total of 1.5GB of data in the past year and my on my iPad, 300MB this past month.
I have no problem with the changes they made, it just really should have been handled better. I expect a little bit more from the marketing department of AT&T. They’re supposed to be professionals.
One of the things that really makes my day is getting cute pictures of my little ones. Think back just 10 years ago and remember how long getting pictures took. Sure, technology had advanced enough to do 1 hour processing but you still had to drive to the store, drop them off and then come back and hunt through the big box for the packet of your pics.
Now, you take a picture and email it immediately, no matter where you are. Yeah, yeah, I know this has been going on for a few years now, but every now and then it’s good to get a reminder that we live in the future.
Here’s what Maryanne sent me a few minutes ago that sparked this line of thought:
Today I had the pleasure of visiting the small village of Blarney and the castle from which it gets its name. I caught a city bus about 2 blocks away from my hotel straight to Blarney. The ride was only about 25 minutes. Not too bad of a ride. Blarney was a cute little village and it was a short walk over to the castle.
It was interesting to see how small the inside of the castle actually is. It was very obvious that people were much shorter when it was built. The climb up to the top of the castle was crazy. An extremely narrow winding staircase. My shoulders brushed each side the entire way up.
Once I got to the top, I leaned out backwards over the open air to “kiss the Blarney”. I still can’t get the taste of stone off my lips.
I settled in to the Clarion Hotel in downtown Cork. Located right in the center of town, it’s a pretty good base of operations. Plenty of interesting spots in the city within walking distance with the bus and train stations a short walk away for destinations beyond. It’s a very modern hotel and they gave me a nice room on the top floor with a decent view of the surrounding area from the balcony. Unfortunately, they hold the honor of having the most uncomfortable bed I have ever slept on so sleep is in short supply. On my next trip, I’ll definitely avoid this place. It’s a shame really, considering how nice the rest of the hotel is. Oh well.
The McAfee office is very nice, full of very friendly people (even though the security guard looks angry) and very modern. Not a bad view out the conference room window either.
forgive the poor iPhone picture
Not too sure what I’m going to do tonight. I have a call from 5 to 5:30 with some folks back in the States and then my all important chat with my girls. After that, will most likely find a place close to the hotel to eat and then lay around and read.
After a nice breakfast, I bid farewell to The Brehon in Killarney. What a great hotel. When I bring the girls back to Ireland, we’re definitely staying there. The drive south through Killarney National Park was stunning…and freezing. Here are some of the sights I saw during the drive:
This should have given me an indicator of what was waiting for me:
Following the GPS directions, I continued heading south along N71. Little did I know that the path the GPS had chosen was the old N71. Instead of following a nice 2 lane paved road, I headed up and over a place called “Priest’s Leap”.
see the red line? That's where I went
I had to add in the red highlight because the line is very small on the map…for good reason. This ended up being one step up from a goat path. The views were tremendous, but it was seriously one lane. In fact, a biker had to step off the trail so I could get by. It took about 5 minutes of maneuvering the one time I did meet another car going the opposite direction.
The view from the top was amazing. It was EXTREMELY cold and windy. No one around but me, some sheep
and some 80 year old Irish man that was apparently out for a walk on a fine spring day.
The road behind me
The road ahead
I managed my way up and down the mountain, all the while thankful for being able to drive a stick and drove the rest of the way down N71 to Cork. I checked into the Clarion in downtown Cork and was given a pretty nice room on the top floor with a balcony.
Tomorrow is Monday, so I’ll be back on company time. I’m looking forward to meeting the McAfee Ireland team. Luckily I don’t have to rely on a GPS to get me to the office!
Last night I checked in at the lovely Brehon in Killarney. A very nice hotel with very friendly staff. When I bring Maryanne and the girls back to Ireland, this is definitely where we will stay. Luckily I was able to get plenty of sleep. Granted, the 30 hours of no sleep and a melatonin definitely helped. I woke up, had a nice breakfast and met up with Richard Clancy of Killarney Guided Walks for a guided tour of Killarney National Park. The interesting thing about this is he does this every day at 11. During the summer he waits at the local bike shop and anyone who shows up can go along. During the winter months, you need to call ahead.
We met up around 11:10 (it was actually 11:20, but according to Richard that is 11:10 in Irish time) and I climbed into the back with his 2 dogs. As a side note, cars in Ireland tend to be of the smaller variety, so here I am wedged into the back seat of a car with his 2 lively dogs introducing themselves to me. It was a pretty funny scene.
Richard proceeded to lead myself and a British lady by the name of Emma on a walk around the smaller of the 2 lakes in the park. All the while, the 2 dogs ranged around us. It was a great day for it, the sky was bright and clear and the air had just a little bit of a nip in it to keep you cool while walking. The area actually reminded me a lot of the area around Mono Lake in CA. It was fairly hilly with a good mix of flora, including a few Monterrey pines and oddly enough 3 palm trees.
This is roughly the path we took:
After hiking for about 4 hours, I strolled around the town of Killarney with a milkshake in hand. It’s going to be an early night for me. I’ve already had dinner and bethed and it’s only just now 10 minutes to 8.
Here are some pictures I took today. Click on any of them to see full sized.
Not sure what tomorrow will bring. I may drive the Ring of Kerry, or I might just take the southern route back to Cork. Either way, it should be fun.
