This is what I get for trying to do something interesting. Back in December, Kirstin and I tried out for roles in a community theater rendition of Taming of the Shrew. We both got parts (I was one of only two males that tried out), and although we were a little skeptical of the hectic practice schedule, we decided to do it. Almost immediately, I had to turn down an offer to play Team Fortress weekly because of the sudden schedule conflict (sorry Matt - I would have sucked anyway).

Disappointing though it was, that wasn't really a big deal. However I soon found out that I was probably going to have to go down to California for my job (the irony is that this is the first time in 2 and half years - oh the timing). I let the director know, and she said it wasn't a problem. She did have to rearrange the schedule when I found the exact dates (turns out it's going to be a whole week). It's great to meet the cast at the same time they have to find out that they have to do an extra day of practice because of you.

Schedule issues aside, we've done about a week of practice and it looks to be a lot of fun. Unfortunately it also looks to be a lot of work. It's been almost 11 years since I've been in a play, and never with this many lines (it's not a massive part, but for me it's plenty). Memorization, here I come...

So I had an entertaining (if somewhat expensive) episode with my car. A little while ago, I started noticing a kind of a groaning noise coming from somewhere on my car. At first I thought it was the wind, but it kept happening on quiet days so I eventually took it in to have it looked at. They quickly narrowed it down to a loose ball bearing on the right wheel, which had to be taken to another shop to get replaced. I had to bring it back the next week because no one was open on New Years. On the second day the car was in the shop (this took 3 days total, four if you count the first day before I brought it back), they got the right wheel assembly back only to discover that this didn't solve the noise, and that they thought the problem was on the other side. Once they got the second one fixed (we're in to day three at this point - I think Kirstin was getting tired of having to get up to drive me to work), the noise still persisted.

The manager at the shop who I had been talking told me that she'd had all of her best guys look at it, they can't find the problem, and as an apology she didn't charge me labor for any of this (this brought what had gone up toward $700 back down to just above $300). She said at that point my best bet was to have a dealership look at it, although she didn't think the car was unsafe to drive. As an afterthought, she said that one thing I could check was to see if the ski rack was making the noise. I tried taking the rack off today, and lo and behold - of course it was the ski rack.

About a month ago, I took of the snowboard attachment on the rack (I moved it to our new, more snow friendly four wheel drive car), leaving just the frame. This apparently caused a vibration of some sort or an interaction with the wind. Guess I should have listened to my first instinct. I'm not too upset, the shop was pretty straight with me and it was probably good preventative maintenance. On the other hand, now my car looks weird without a ski rack. The ski rack used to be the only thing separating genericar from the rest of the Japanese early nineties 4-door sedans that all looked exactly the same, but fortunately most of those besides mine are off the road by now.

Gahh...music genres. So I got an iPod for Hannukah (the big 160gb one). I'm really enjoying it so far, having all of my music on one device is something I've been wanting since I started collecting mp3's years ago. Unfortunately, I've made the mistake of trying to set genres. The problem of course is picking one genre for a given album or artist (I ranted about this a few years ago). I tried to get around this with the smart playlists (very neat feature by the way) and setting multiple genres in the comments, but you can't browse by album (and take advantage of all the album covers I've spent time settting up).

First I had to fix all the one that had completely wrong genres (how the hell did Franz Ferdinand and Tori Amos get set to "Tribal" and the Red Violin Soundtrack get stuck with "Trip-Hop"?). But it's really the deciding between genres that gets me. What's funny is how subjective it is - for example, stuff that would probably get stuck in the same category differs in my view based on time period. For example, Indie and Alternative are mostly the same genre (if either can really considered a cohesive genre), but for me it really depends on whether they were mostly popular in the 90's or the 00's. But what if they were active in both decades...now there's a pickle. And don't get me start on the many genres of electronic music (or is it electronica - damn). In the end I suppose it boils down to just choosing I want to browse by, true categorization be damned (but...but...I gotta get it right...).

I also made the mistake of finding the ability to add lyrics, a neat feature that lets you view the lyrics of a song on the iPod while a song is playing. It's also a feature that would take an astronomical amount of time. I've currently got just over 19,000 songs, figure maybe half of them are instrumental, some I don't care to have lyrics, carry the 8, and you still have me adding lyrics well into next summer. That's supposing I don't spend too much of that time categorizing...

So we went to see The Nutcracker last night (as in the ballet). My mom used to take me to see it in Atlanta when I was a kid, so this was decidedly nostalgic. It was a pretty fun, although it kind of seemed like it was lacking something. I can't tell if it was because I was seeing it as an adult (I never realized exactly how kid-centric this is), or if it was something about this particular performance. Speaking of kids, I would say at least a third of the audience was under 10 years old, and the ones within earshot really seemed to be enjoying it. It actually makes me curious to see a more adult ballet. That and reminding me to dig through the many classical albums I've accumulated over the years that I've never really listened to.

All I wanted to do was play Portal. I did finally get to play it today (almost done), although I bought it a week and a half ago. In the interim my computer has been somewhat less than cooperative. Long story short, I had a video card go bad, and had a hard drive get somewhat corrupted. (not sure yet whether I actually lost some data) After a week's worth of wrangling, much mental anguish, a new cpu fan, hard drive, and video card, I think I finally have a working computer. Dealing with computer hardware really is a pain. The trial and error method that works so well in learning to program and otherwise operate a computer works just as well with hardware, except with much more expensive mistakes. I'd stick entirely with the software side of things if it wasn't so much cheaper than buying a pre-built box (OS legitimatacy issues aside). That and I feel so knowledgeable when I do get it working; at least until the next time my computer is DOA and I have no idea what the problem is.