So on Friday of last week until this past Sunday, I went to the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival in Worcester, Mass. It was the shit. I really should have gone years ago. This year I saved a little bit of money up, got a hotel room, got the three day pass, and fucking went. Glad I did. So here’s my review:
Friday night:
In Flames was pretty darn good. Children of Bodom was alright. I don’t dislike them but don’t terribly like them. Rest of the bands I don’t like.
Saturday:
Shadowsfall was awesome. I met the band and got some shit signed. Brian is pretty cool guy. There were a couple of bands on the second stage that were alright, but I didn’t write their names down, so I dunno who they were. Oh well.
Sunday:
A Life Once Lost fucking owned, as usual.
Born of Osiris was decent. The keyboardist fucked up the first song but got his shit together afterwards. I met them after their set. Pretty cool guys. Got one of their posters signed, that I ripped off the wall, only to find out they were handing out new ones at their signing.
Eluveitie was an interesting band. 8 piece band, with celtic/death metal shit. Fiddle and Hurdy Gurdy instruments. Strange but interesting.
Turisas wasn’t bad.
Meshuggah was the best band there at the entire show. Hands down. Their sound engineer was a pro. Was the best sounding band there. Could easily hear each instrument and Jen’s vocals. The most metal moment from the entire show was the person in the chicken suit in the mosh pit who then crowd surfed two songs into Meshuggah’s set. Sadly I didn’t have my camera handy or could easily get a shot.

That’s about all I remember now. I took pictures, but realized on Saturday there were a shitton of pro camera people there, so why bother with pictures. Returntothepit.com has a good gallery of photos from each day.

Maria does a damn nice job at it. Almost the female version of Phil. In This Moment has some good stuff too. Not every song is great, but there’s a handful off their 1st album I like.

I’ve been keeping my eye on the new Meshuggah album obZen release date, set to march currently. Then today I got the bright idea to check the pirate bay to see if someone had a leaked copy, and sure enough there it was, 9 tracks of solid ownage. Released over a month ago Bleed is one of my favorite songs off the album so far. Tomas sounds like he is playing a machine gun, but with his drumset.
I definitely plan on purchasing this album. Brutal sums it up.

I started a second job about a month ago. I am doing residential voice and DSL installs for a CLEC here in Maine. Going pretty well. Having fun doing it. Learning a bit about the telco side of DSL installs, which is neat. What works and what doesn’t work. How VZ fucks up just about every install I try to do. They seriously do not do any work, unless a trouble ticket is put in to them. None of the prep work is done properly, like setting up the circuit or tagging the circuit in the NID, etc. Due to this job, I’ve expanded my toolkit to add a telco lineman set (aka buttset), a 3/8″ nut driver (needed for opening the NIDs and binding post screws), and an old Consultronics COLT-250 ADSL test tool. This tool is pretty sweet, although buggy. Uses a lot of batteries. Sometimes it will sync, other times it won’t. I’ve already purchased a used COLT-250+ off eBay to replace it. The COLT-250+ is a lot better from what I’ve read. The job pays relatively well. Currently, I’m one of three techs in the area. One of the techs is off on vacation, so I have to pick up that tech’s workload plus my current workload, which keeps me pretty busy.

I finished putting all my invoices and whatnot into Quickbooks. Found I made a bit more money than last year, although still not enough to live on. Hopefully with this 2nd job, I’ll be able to move out by my birthday.

Last month I did a contract IT job at the VA Togus Hospital, which was kind of neat. Big campus. Rolled out a test bed of almost 70 new Dell Optiplex 755 computers in two days. Not too shabby. Made a few bucks.

I finally got some time and have started listing these Cisco 3662 routers I purchased from the State Public Sale a couple months ago. I hope to make some decent bank off them, to pay bills and what not.

With all the e-mail I get from customers and jobs, I figured now was a good time to look into getting a cell phone that has data access. After a lot of research, I chose a Blackberry Pearl 8130 from US Cellular. Man this cell phone is pretty fucking cool. 2MP Camera (see below), video and audio player, good data service (not terribly fast, but good enough). I can now get all my business e-mail while I am on the road. Nationwide coverage, 450mins, free incoming calls, text, etc. Unlimited Blackberry service (actually it is limited at 5GB not that I am going to come close to that). I set my business VoIP phone service through Vonage to e-mail me a .WAV file of new voicemails left at my office. Now I can get those voicemails as a .WAV and play them on my Pearl without having to call my voicemail box and use up minutes. That’s fucking cool. Coverage seems to be pretty good so far.

My only issue is getting US Cellular to port my existing phone number from Tracfone over. US Cellular claims it cannot be done. I dunno about that. I’ve gotta speak with someone higher up the chain at that place and get the real word about it.

That about sums up what’s happened in the past couple of months. No good concerts for awhile it would appear. BLEH