The picture above might seem like a paradox, but the two do go together. I want to hear Eddie wail on the guitar, David Lee Roth singing, Alex VH pounding the skins and Wolfie on bass, but don’t want to regret the experience with ringing ears for the rest of this week,

Wish I’d been a little wiser in my younger years when attending concerts and not wearing adequate ear protection. All I knew is I wanted to go see ___ band and buy the obligatory concert t-shirt. Hearing? Who worries about that kind of stuff at a rock concert?

Parents and people who don’t want to go deaf.

And as a parent, I’ve got earplugs for our oldest son who I’m taking to the concert (or is he going with me?). Neither he (age 17) or I have seen Van Halen in concert before, so this promises to be a treat. Not sure how he’s going to feel about earplugs, but it’s not going to be optional. The last concert I saw at Key was Metallica and Godsmack in 2004 and that way too loud.

Here’s to hoping Eddie’s guitar is tune. That awful YouTube video was earlier on the tour and I’m fairly certain they’ve worked out those kinds of kinks by now.

It would also be nice to see a real keyboard player on tour instead of them piping in sampled keyboards, but I’ll live with that. Finally, and even though I’ve said this in the past, it would be nice to see Michael Anthony make a surprise appearance. Very small percentage chance of that happening. I’m already missing his Jack Daniels bass and we haven’t even left for the concert yet.

How will Wolfgang Van Halen do on bass and backing vocals? I’ll have a firsthand review tomorrow, unless we get swept away in the Seattle deluge out there.

Despite living within a couple hours of the ocean, we only get over there about once a year. After visiting Lincoln City over the weekend we’d like to change that going forward. We were able to get an oceanfront view at the Nordic for $80. Check out this guy on the beach in the morning writing a birthday message:

Nature’s eraser showed up to wash away his work:

Kind of reminded me of how blog posts, messageboards threads and so on are wiped away by time. What we’re doing today, how long will it last, really? One of the strengths of blogging remains the immediacy but one could argue that most blogs have a high rate of decay.

The last time we went to the coast, I wrote about beach blogging and the guy writing in the sand immediately reminded of this. If you’re traveling down the Oregon coast, Lincoln City is recommended. It’s good to go AFK once in awhile.

We just got back from a mini road trip to demo our newest car gadget: the Garmin Street Pilot c330. I’ve been checking out these GPS navigation systems for awhile and waiting for the right moment to jump in. One of the Wal-mart Black Friday deals was the Garmin c330 which Consumer Reports rated highly. $128? Are you kidding? I’m there.

Official website product page for Garmin Street Pilot c330
Buy Garmin StreetPilot c330 at Amazon (affiliate)

The c330 comes in one of those knuckle bleeding clam shell cases. Take your favorite pocket knife or razor blade to the case and unveil the contents: c330 which fits in the palm of your hand, suction cup mount and circular dash sticky mount, CD and USB cord.

Attaching the Garmin c330 to the suction cup windshield mount is as easy as pressing it into the grooves and snapping it gently into place. You don’t even need to even plug it into the USB to charge the three hour internal battery.

I wet the back of the suction cup, unhinged the clasp and then stuck it on the front windshield beneath the rearview mirror of our 2007 PT Cruiser. The winshield mount swivels so when you aren’t using the device you can push it up near the mirror and give yourself more line of sight. There is a small plugin on the device for the cigarette adapter which powers the c330.

Note: the states of California and Minnesota prohibit the use of anything that attaches to your windshield. You’ll need to use the enclosed circular dash mount for those cases. Pity really, as the c330 isn’t intrusive (see picture above of limited line of sight interference).

During our trip, we decided to move the unit down further so it had a better view of the skies. We had some issues with locating satellites with it closer to the rear-view mirror.

On first power-up the c330 will communicate with the satellite and triangulate your position. Now big brother knows where you are at (just kidding). This process takes a couple minutes. Meanwhile you can thumb through one of the smallest instruction manuals I’ve received with any gadget. It’s like a half dozen pages with color pictures. The Garmin Street Pilot c330 ranks among one of the easiest to setup gadgets I’ve ever used.

After the initial setup the User Interface gives you two choice: Where to? and View Map.

This simplistic UI is surprisingly effective. Both my wife and I found it very easy to tell the Garmin c330 where we wanted to go.

In the above picture four key items are marked in red:

1. The arrival time to your destination. This will be explained in more detail shortly.
2. Menu button will return you to the “Where now?” screen. You can also access the settings (marked with a wrench). These items are disabled in safe mode while driving. You can disable safe mode if a passenger is going to program new or modify existing destinations. If you choose a new destination along the route to another one, the c330 will ask you if you want to travel to the secondary location along the way to your existing destination. This is useful if you are hungry and need to veer a bit off track in order to get to a nearby restaurant.
3. This is your vehicle. Note that your destination is shown in red. As long as you keep the car in the red, you’re traveling the right direction. Funny that they didn’t use green. Your destination is marked with a checkered flag.
4. On the right bottom corner is how many miles or feet until your next turn or action point. We learned that sometimes the c330 would tell us to “stay right” or “stay left” when the text actually says to turn. A little confusing when you look at the screen but if you follow the road, you’re good to go.

One of the neat functions is being able to choose the “near” option which will tell you where points of interest are like shopping malls, gas stations, restaurants and more. When you find a spot you want to go to, like we did with a nearby Godfather’s Pizza you just touch with your finger and choose “Go.”

Perhaps the biggest issue with these devices is the accuracy of the maps and satellite connection. If the maps are too outdated then it will show you places nearby that don’t exist at all. Godfather’s Pizza in Lacey is now a Round Table, for example. We also found a couple other places on our brief beach trip that didn’t exist.

As for the satellite connection, we experienced a total meltdown with the Garmin c330 while driving through Portland, Oregon. It kept losing the signal and when it found a signal it would be off on streets nearby that we weren’t on. I decided to call Garmin support today to see what they recommended about dealing with outdated maps and inferior satellite connectivity through a major city in the United States. If we lived in and/or regularly navigated through Portland there’s no way I’d want to use this device. I learned that there is a free firmware upgrade on the website which specifically deals with this issue.

Another useful feature is bright, very readable text that shows detailed data about your trip such as (pictured above):

- how long it will take to get there. The estimated arrival time is shown in the lower left corner. This gives you the ability to estimate how many miles away you are. The arrival time and miles will adjust as you move closer to your destination.
- miles per hour traveled both current and overall average. There is also a rather useles max speed counter. We found this number getting out of sync frequently showing numbers like 286mph. In a PT Cruiser? Yeah, right. Even got a number 986mph once, I’d like to see the speeding ticket for that one!
- trip counter (”Total time”). Contains stats for how far traveled, how much time. Some vehicles have these features as part of the cruise control package and this would be a duplicate feature but for those vehicles without, it’s handy.
- stop time (”Stopped”). How much time are you spending stopped at traffic lights?

Both the trip settings (”Reset Trip”) and max settings (”Reset Max”) can be reset with a touch to the buttons along the bottom.

Somewhat quirky search
You can also enter in street addresses and search by names, but the search is greatly dependent on the map database. Again, everything goes back to the map database. We tried finding the Fry’s in our area. We tried misspelling (below) and spelling it correctly but the c330 could not locate the Fry’s in Renton.

Fortunately, we could enter in the exact address and have the c330 help us navigate there that way.

The importance of current maps
Business open and close, it’s very difficult for the maps to stay completely current, but after further more extensive testing I was disappointed that the c330 comes with crippled maps. The reason the c330 is being sold so cheaply is because the maps are outdated and there isn’t enough space internally on the units to hold the entire US and Canada. Since we travel to Canada a few times a year, this isn’t a good unit for us.

Surprisingly, the customer support rep at Garmin was very helpful in recommending the following other Garmin units which would fit our needs better:

Street Pilot c340 - this is the newer model in the 300 series and if it doesn’t come with the current 2008 maps, Garmin will automatically send you the new maps for free ($70 USD for c330 owners). This also adds the feature of voice prompts for the street name: e.g “turn right on main street in 0.2 miles” versus the c330 version of: “turn right in 0.2 miles.” Also the c340 comes with a feature that allows viewing the maps on your computer. This way you can map out destinations from your computer.
nuVee 250 (no voice streets) - comes with enough space to hold full US and Canada maps but doesn’t have the voice prompts
nuVee 260 (voice street prompts = yes) - a little more expensive than the 250.

And finally a more fancy and expensive version was offered: the nuvee 350 (voice street yes, MP3 and picture storage). Not sure we need to go this far as we already have an iPod and Zune with plenty of storage for music and pictures, but it’s nice to know what versions come with the 2008 maps. It’s too bad Wal-mart didn’t do anything to educate people on Black Friday that the c330 deal came with a big *asterisk:

*1. maps are outdated and it cost $70 to update them
*2. unit doesn’t have the capacity to hold full maps for US and Canada. Something important that people who live near the border like we do will probably want to know.

Bad Wal-mart, bad. I suppose we should have expected it was too good a deal to be true.

Points of Interest
One last thing to mention that makes these devices cool are programmable points of interest (POI). You can download POI from various sites on the web to an SD card up to 2GB in size and then be able to access them from all the Garmin GPS devices. I didn’t check into how easy this is to do, formats and the like, but it sounds like a great way to make your GPS even more useful.

After using the c330 the last few days, and especially because I love playing around with new gadgets, I’m not sure how or why I haven’t bought and used one of these devices sooner.

Summary and Grade
If you live in the midwest or don’t travel to Canada, the c330 could be an OK first GPS device at the price. I was really stoked about the device until realizing the number of limitations. Now I have buyer’s remorse. I was on hold calling Garmin support for almost 20 minutes before the rep came to the line (bad), but found the friendly service representative helpful and knowledgeable.

I love how easy it is to read the c330 screen. It will automatically switch into night mode display which is also easy to read in the evening. The touch screen sensitivity was just right although my fingers did press the wrong keys a few times. Overall, not something that would turn me off to the interface which I think is one of the strengths of the device.

It’s rare when a customer support person encourages you to take something back to the store because the device isn’t a good fit for your individual situation. Additionally she knew the answers to my other questions and helped me understand what other units they sold would be a better fit. I’ll end up spending more, but then if we bought the $70 maps that we couldn’t even load fully anyway, we’d be at $200 anyway. I’m thinking for $200 we should be able to find the c340. Amazon shows the c340 for almost $100 more than we paid for the c330.

At the price and if you don’t mind the limitations the c330 could provide a whole new travel dimension. I’m going to take it back to Wal-mart and see if I can get the c340 instead. Grade: C+

Happy Thanksgiving to readers and visitors stopping by today who celebrate. Thank you for reading and if subscribed, thank for that as well.

This is actually the fifth Thanksgiving celebrated on this blog: 2003 (it snowed!), 2004 (my favorite Thanksgiving family picture to date), 2005, 2006 and today 2007 where it feels cold enough to snow, but isn’t snowing yet.

Forget the cranberry sauce? Need more rolls for Uncle Lou and the gang? Want to do a little holiday gift shopping while the bird is baking in the oven? Here are a few stores that might be open and links to their store locator pages, if available. If marked as (regional) they are regional to me, meaning the greater Seattle area.

Addendum (4:18pm PST): before going out to any of the stores, make sure you use the store locator and call the store in your area first. Be sure it’s open first.

Safeway store locator - plenty of yams (ick!) and cranberry sauce (yummy) here.
(regional) Top Foods store locator - groceries galore
Fred Meyer store locator - one of our favorite shopping places nearby is open until 4pm.
Walmart store locator - 24 hour stores only close on Christmas day.
Kmart store locator - our local Kmart has been pretty dead the last few times we’ve been there which means there might be some good deals there if it’s the same way in your area.

(regional) The Seattle PI has a list of what’s opened and closed today and tomorrow.

In December 2004, we purchased a 2005 Saturn Relay.

It was a new SUV-type vehicle for Saturn that was loaded with features and seats seven. We planned to use it — and did, several times — for family vacations for the five of us. Plenty of room, DVD in the back, good sound system, it was all good. I blogged about the new car buying event with pictures of the new wheels (pictured above).

As I wrote when we bought the 2007 PT Cruiser in August, you never really know how good a car is until you’ve owned it a few years. Until you’ve had things go wrong, both minor and hopefully not major. The new vehicle elation can always cloud your judgement. That’s what car salesmen prey upon. It’s the reason they always want you to test drive the car and “feel those seats.” Time and experience is the only way to know if you bought a good or bad car.

The ultimate vehicle owner scare happened to us at 41,636 miles: the check engine light came on — and stayed illuminated.

Unsure of what this meant, we parked the Relay and made plans to take it into the dealer for repair. We have three vehicles in our household with only one driver, so not a major deal to park until we could get it into the shop. We were near the time for an oil change anyway. Over the weekend we went in for our Saturday appointment. Saturn charged us $51 to put the Relay on a diagnostic machine.

(Does this seem a little expensive to plug into a computer? I’m sure there’s more to this than that, but ok, we agreed.)

Turns out our EGR sensor is having problems. They indicated it would cost almost $600 to fix, and yes, it would be an out of warranty repair. My first thought, admittedly biased by past experience: here we go again.

Over 10 years ago we bought a brand new Hyundai Elantra GLS which worked great until it left the warranty period and then there were major transmission issues. We ended up sinking a stream of money into that dog. Terrible investment. Hyundai is on our Likely Never To Do Business With list again.

But it wasn’t only the EGR sensor, they said there were four errors related to the heating and air conditioning system? What? Now we were even more concerned. Maybe I’m being too naive, but I don’t buy a new car expecting problems this soon. 41,636 miles with one $600 out of warranty repair and another unknown repair requiring exploratory surgery which would also be out of warranty?

Dump or keep the vehicle?
Here we are three years later and we’re at a different stage in life as far as vehicle needs. While it’s cramped, we can pile into the smaller car for shorter trips and we’re not taking or planning on taking as many family trips. One of our teens will be graduating later this year and is talking job and looming in the distance is the inevitable: need a car. Until now we’ve staved off the whole kids driving thing because we’ve added the requirement: no job, no car, but that doesn’t seem viable much longer as our oldest son has a line on a job as a plumber as soon as he graduates.

Now we need to start thinking about the possibility of cars for at least one of our teens as well as my wife who has her driver’s license permit. She doesn’t want to learn on a stick (the PT Cruiser is manual), so now we’re thinking about selling the Relay and exchanging with a smaller car that Kara could drive initially and could be sold to our son down the line.

Talked to the Saturn salespeople and as you might expect, they were salivating over the prospect of a new sale. They showed us a couple different cars including a new 2007 Ion 3 Coupe. Any readers buy an Ion Coupe? Good? Bad? Consumer Reports gives the 2007 Ion 3 Coupe high marks but past year models haven’t fared as well.

As we did with the PT Cruiser, I went to carsdirect.com to check into the Ion 3 Coupe and printed out the pages. They are running a $1,750 rebate or 0% financing deal at the moment.

We were planning to head back to the dealer today to look at the Ion 3 Coupe and also to look at some other cars too, but the weather is starting get nasty around here, so maybe not. We didn’t think we’d be back in the car buying mode again so soon, but it appears we might be with this new information on the Relay and our needs changing. Then again, maybe we’ll just suck it up and pay for the repairs.

Suggestions? Feedback?

Do you have a hard time keeping track of when your next vehicle maintenance is required? Service Beacon is there to help keep up with the maintenance on your vehicle. Hat tip to Dumb Little Man where I first saw Service Beacon mentioned. Some of the registration information seemed extraneous and made me wonder if region-based ad targeting is going to be following. Why does Service Beacon require my First and Last name, for example?

After registering and clicking on a validation link, the next step is adding your car. I added our 2007 PT Cruiser first. The system dropdown menus offered me the option to choose “model not here” but it had all the right information for our car.

Step two is finding your local dealer which in the case for both cars they didn’t have the local Puyallup Chrysler or Puyallup Saturn dealerships in their database. I was able to add the dealer and city name on the “unknown dealership” form.

After adding the car and the mileage, a screen on Service Beacon is returned telling you what the next maintenance — or current maintenance — will be required for your car. You can create a record of your maintenance trips, but a glaring omission seemed to be any sort of export function? Is it possible to get this information — besides printing the screens — back out of Service Beacon? If not, please add this feature.

Within an hour of registration — and this is the part that makes me nervous about the service — I received two separate emails from Service Beacon. Why couldn’t they put both notices in one email? It’s not like our email boxes are crowded enough already. One of the emails is shown below.

Coincidentally, yesterday we received a snail mail reminder from the Chrysler dealer that it’s time for our next oil change, but we were just there a month ago and the sticker in the window says we don’t need to come back until 6,000 miles or 12/18, whichever comes first. Service Beacon shows the next service date as December 4. I realize these are estimates, but you don’t want to over-service your vehicle. Once every three months / 3,000 miles should be more than sufficient for lube, oil and filter changes.

The Saturn dealership hasn’t been very good about notifying us about maintenance windows with our 2005 Saturn Relay and this coming weekend we’re taking it in because the check engine light has come on (we haven’t driven it since this happened). At 41,000 miles, we’re hoping it’s something very minor. One of the services I miss when we dropped Onstar was the monthly email diagnostics for our Relay. That might have shed some more light on the problem than the light.

Why don’t we have more intelligent check engine light notifications?
I’m sure luxury cars are better about this then lower end cars, but our Saturn Relay cost over $25,000 which isn’t exactly cheap. Today’s car technology should be able to offer a human readable message about what’s wrong with the car. Sensor out of place? We’ve maintained the car properly, taking it in for the regular oil changes and tune-ups.

Keep reading, there is a technology solution and it costs less than $200 to implement. It’s too bad if this technology is available that it’s not a standard feature on every new car. Imagine if you could take the information in your car and stream the data to your computer via WiFi while it’s parked in the driveway.

CarChip Pro
While I’m not aware of there being a WiFi option, there is a USB one called CarChip. I remember seeing the Carchip Pro at one of the retail stores that would report back information in most newer model cars:

Just plug CarChip into the OBDII port (easily found under the dashboard or steering wheel) and you’re ready to roll. Once installed, CarChip reads and stores data from your car’s on-board computers, continuously logging driving and engine performance.

Does either of our newer cars have an OBDIII port? According to this tool, both our vehicles have OBDIII ports, but darned if I can find them. I’m going to check with the dealer at the next service and ask them to show me where the port is located. If we do have one, then we need to buy one of these CarChips and try it out. They are available at Amazon.

Imagine how much more useful a service like Service Beacon could be in helping you manage your car data on your desktop than something web-based if they had the data from one of these chips. As Service Beacon is, it’s more or less an email reminder service with a database of the maintenance schedules for various models. If you don’t want to read through the owner’s manual and create your own email service reminders, it could be useful.

Me? I want more. I’m going to explore this CarChip option further. Will get back when I learn more. If anybody reading is already using the CarChip, please share your experience below.

A couple of notable moments, including a few firsts in my life, occurred at last night’s Rick Springfield concert at the Emerald Queen Casino in Tacoma, WA. Before the concert, we picked up Springfield’s Written in Rock 2-CD set retrospective of his career to date. We paid $18.99 at a local record store, but I see it for $24.98 on Amazon [affiliate].

The 2-CD set includes a full 42 songs with a couple of covers of Beatles songs (”Eleanor Rigby” and “For No One”) and extensive liner notes by Rick himself discussing how each track came to be created. For example, on Jessie’s Girl is that the song was originally written about his friend’s hot girlfriend that Rick knew he would never have, was titled Randy’s Girl, and included a long guitar solo that was shortened to be more pop chart friendly. I like when artists provide this background with CDs. Lots of pictures too.

I think my favorite parts were when Springfield came out into the audience while performing — literally. Of the numerous live concerts I’ve seen over the years, I’ve only seen one other artist do this, Air Supply. The guitarist from Armored Saint did one of those jump into the crowd things and they didn’t catch him. Ouch, that has to hurt. Springfield came out into the crowd during the song, “Don’t talk to Strangers” and then again during “Human Touch” and a cover of The Who’s “My Generation.” He also covered “Red House” in the setlist.

Springfield pointed the microphone to the crowd and had some of them, including one of the security guards, sing the words: “Don’t talk to strangers.” Nice touch!

My fellow rocker friend Matt Wardlaw stopped by yesterday in the comments to tell me that Rick Springfield puts on a good show. With that kind of endorsement, I figured it would be a good time — and it was. A new reader, Mufi, tells me how she got box seats to see Metallica and confirms that marriage does involve sacrifices.

Last night’s show was no sacrifice. I was entertained.

Mufi also points out that Springfield has a new CD of Christmas songs out. He played one of his original Christmas songs. I don’t know about Christmas rock records, although I kind of liked Twisted Sister Twisted Christmas CD.

In 2008 Springfield has a new CD coming out with a song called “Who Killed Rock” that he opened with last night. I was kind of surprised how much Rick’s guitarist wailed. The guy could really play well. Kind of reminded me of David Lee Roth’s guitarist. Springfield is good on the fretboard too, although during his solo he muffed a few notes and the guitar was noticeably out of tune.

As expected, Springfield played his several hits: “Affair of the Heart,” “I’ve Done Everything For You,” “State of the Heart,” and of course his #1 song “Jessie’s Girl” which was the last song before the encore which included two more songs. One, I wasn’t familiar with (”Wasted” ?) and the final song “Love is alright” concluded the performance.

The mix was decent, although at times I had a hard time hearing Springfield’s vocals. My wife pointed out that he seemed to yell a little too much instead of singing. And he forgot the words to a couple songs, saying “shit” into the microphone at one point instead of the actual lyrics. I’d kind of expect this from one of the first few shows, but according to his tour page, he’s put on dozens of shows before this one. Maybe the songs he muffed the words weren’t played at most of these shows? In my experience, it’s not that uncommon for artists to forget words here and there on live shows.

I was surprised how animated Springfield was on stage. He threw his guitar way up in the air and caught it one-handed, he took roses and other flowers from the crowd and strummed his guitar with them, severing the flowers and having petals fly everywhere. Matt was right, Springfield puts on a good show. We had decent seats, sort of near the back, at $35 a ticket (pictured), near the fire exit on the left side of the stage.

No pictures were allowed to be taken at the venue, which I saw being broken by several fans. At one point, Springfield took a cell phone from one of the female fans and called “mom” telling her that he was Rick Springfield and that he had a “condom.” The crowd roared. Now that’s interacting with the fans.

When the concert was over we hung around the casino for 30 minutes or so, letting the crowd dissipate, playing one of the video keno machines. After her and I lost $100, my wife won it back by hitting 4 out of 4. Then something strange happened: we went to cash the EZ Ticket out and were told the computers were “all down.” The workers were milling around in a state of confusion and concern, wondering aloud: “the IT guys better get on this.”

Since we couldn’t put the ticket in any of the machines in the back of the casino, we moved forward to the front half of the casino and came upon this Chain Reaction $1 slot machine along the side of the machine. I stuck the $100 ticket in it and was immediately credited with 100 credits. I planned to only play it a few spins and on the fourth spin came up one Chain Reaction symbol and two red 7’s in the middle: $300! Spun it a couple more times and then hit the cash out button. Now we had a ticket for $394. Took that to the main cage where long lines of people were cashing in tickets. We had no problem waiting to make over $300! Thanks Emerald Queen Casino for paying us to go see Rick Springfield — and then some. First time I can remember ever being paid to go see a concert. Nice.

Summary and grade
Overall, the concert was a solid, satisfying experience. Musically I wasn’t as enthralled as at some other concerts, but that’s a matter of personal taste. I’d probably pay to see Springfield again someday — and would definitely be willing to get paid to go see him thanks to gambling winnings (that likely won’t happen again) — which is a considerable improvement from yesterday’s post where I was reluctant to attend. Glad my wife wanted to go, a lot of fun. Grade: B.

This morning I learned Rick Springfield turned 58 years old on August 23 of this year and has returned to playing Dr. Noah Drake on General Hospital. When he last appeared regularly on General Hospital in the eighties he also had some success on the guitar and singing. And then he went off radar until 2005.

What do you know about soap operas? I know a little bit and have a secret to tell.

(drumroll)

In the ninth grade in Wisconsin I used to ride my bike home for lunch, microwave a burrito and watch Days of our Lives. There was this Roman is a slasher plotline that hooked me. That’s my only time watching or following any soap operas. How about you, have you ever watched any soaps? Be honest now or the blog demons will get you!

A honey-do on the schedule tonight with the arrival of Rick Springfield in concert? My wife told me yesterday, “You better take me somewhere this weekend,” — and then added that she would like to see Rick Springfield.

Marriage involves sacrifices and concessions and it’s not like going to a Springfield concert is akin to bathing in sulfuric acid. Also, the opposite sex scenery — IE. the other women lusting after Springfield in attendance — probably won’t hurt my aging eyes either.

Hope I don’t lose my rocker edge by admitting I kind of liked Springfield’s hit song, Jessie’s Girl. Beyond Jessie’s Girl, I barely recognize any of his other greatest hits. We saw Air Supply live when the Emerald Queen had acts on the boat and both enjoy seeing live acts, so maybe Springfield will surprise me. That’s if we get tickets, as we don’t have any yet and the Ticketmaster ticketing system is down as of this writing. We’ll probably just stop by the casino later today and buy them. $35-55 each, about the going rate for a concert these days.

There is something scarier than the prospect of seeing Rick Springfield live in concert: answering this nightmarish question:

(shudder)

Smile, it’s Saturday.

Good “observation piece” as my friend darkmoon puts it who is one of the people behind the ConvergeSouth conference that just finished in Greensboro, North Carolina. I’ve never traveled to the states southeast of Chicago, IL so my comments at least in part in this post are based on looking at how the southern states vote historically in elections: predominantly red (Republican, 2004 election results below).

This logically suggests to me if/when I visit these places I’ll encounter a higher percentage of conservative-leaning people than liberals which are everywhere in this neck of the woods (greater Seattle area). Understood. If I travel to France, I’m probably going to run into a higher percentage of French speaking people. Travel to Mexico and Spanish speaking people will be in higher numbers. Got it.

Darkmoon writes:

Year after year, we always do damage control with people that diss the conference. Usually they’re from people that didn’t go to the conference but insist that there’s some unsaid political agenda. We invite people that use the technology to push their voice and thus fulfilling the vision of the conference. Yet somehow or another, people keep coming back to how it’s more left… and more progressive.. yadda yadda.

As someone who has criticized conferences in the past that I haven’t attended — for lack of perceived value, never for political reasons — I find this a curious subject. We all attend conferences for our own reasons expecting to get something out of them. Maybe it’s more business contacts, more contacts period. It certainly isn’t the WiFi at conferences, because most suck (hint: always bring your own EVDO). In my experience the hallways and networking are vastly more valuable than listening to most speakers, panels and breakout events.

But politics? Really?

Who goes to technical conferences with political agendas? Why? Who started this trend? Was it Chris Pirillo by inviting John Edwards to speak at his annual Gnomedex event? Why didn’t he invite a Republican to counter this? I’m guessing he didn’t have any Republicans who wanted to come? I just pinged him on Skype and asked if any Republicans ever approached him to speak at a tech conference? Maybe he’ll respond below, because he didn’t reply in time before this went to publish. (Update 1:19pm PST: Chris responded — only Edwards)

Recently Republican candidate Mitt Romney responded first to Techcrunch about doing a podcast interview. There were 76 comments, some of them containing some very good possible questions. That seems like a better forum to discuss tech-related political concerns than at a tech conference.

If I want to go to a political event, I’ll go to a rally not a tech conference. I’ll spend time at political websites and interacting at political forums, which is what I’ve been doing the last couple weeks. I’m not saying some new, interesting, cool technology behind a political site shouldn’t be covered at a tech conference, but I don’t go to a tech conference to get the soft or hard sell for a political party or individual candidate, do you?

According to darkmoon’s post, apparently some do.

At least some are very concerned about how partisan a conference is or isn’t and want to voice their frustration about it after the event has ended. When he first mentioned this to me in IRC, I was kind of surprised this was a big deal. Those who are freaking out over partisanship at tech conference planners should keep staying home and letting others go. Or form your own political conference with tech as a secondary focus maybe? Those who are planning TECH conferences should try their best, and darkmoon contends they do, to keep these TECH conferences as non-partisan as possible.

Every conference has their conflicts. As somebody who once was part of a conference that focused on the adult industry, the big deal there was webmistresses (female webmasters) not wanting to be treated like models (content). At those conferences the political concerns centered around 2257 laws. Understandably each type of conference has hot button issues. Easiest way to avoid them? Just tell people to check their hangups at the door or don’t come. And if they can’t follow these rules during the conference politely show them the door.

As for the people who bitch and moan that they aren’t coming? Listen, thank them for the feedback and try to integrate these suggestions into next year’s event if they are the prospective audience you wish to attend.

Our office transition from CRT to LCD monitors is almost complete. We have been starting to stockpile some unused CRT monitors:

We tried to take them to Goodwill and they didn’t want them. And here I thought Goodwill took everything? These monitors are all in good working condition and could probably be sold locally for $25+ each, but we wanted to donate them instead. My wife came up with the idea to see if the local school computer lab needed them. Great idea. We donated a digital camera to the school paper last week.

Our son checked and the high school would love to take them off our hands. Time to load them into the car and say goodbye to CRT (forever?). We’re keeping one behind as a backup just in case something goes down, but I’d imagine by this time next year we’ll have an extra LCD monitor or two. Then they’ll go the way of floppy disks.

Any other good places to donate working CRT monitors, keyboards, mice, etc?