Jason Wong

New Order played at the Henry J. Kaiser Arena yesterday, and they were awesome! Peter Hook’s incredible, as always. This show was cozier, and probably better than their Republic Tour.

The setlist:

01 – She’s Lost Control 02 – Love Vigilantes 03 – Regret 04 – Hey Now What You Doing 05 – Krafty 06 – Transmission 07 – True Faith 08 – Run Wild 09 – Jetstream 10 – Waiting For The Sirens’ Call 11 – Bizarre Love Triangle 12 – Love Will Tear Us Apart 13 – Temptation 14 – Crystal Encore: Blue Monday (w/some Kylie Minogue vocals added)

Couple notes: It’s been 25 years, since the passing of Ian Curtis (and therefore, Joy Division), so they put 3 JD songs in the set (1, 6, and 12), and they didn’t play too much new stuff, which I’m very thankful for. Barney said Run Wild, and Jetstream were two of his favorite songs. Run Wild, I can see, but Jetstream seemed fairly uninspired to me. I’ll have to give it a few more listens. They used a lot of pre-recorded synth and voiceovers, which I didn’t like – it’s much better when they play only with their instruments and live synth.

There were two opening bands – One unknown DJ group, which seemed to just like looping a track 5 times, and switching to another one, and Chemical Brothers. Watching CB live is kinda like watching two guys on stage rocking back and forth. You can take it for about 5 minutes, but you need to find some way to entertain yourself for the other 40. I appreciated Block Rockin’ Beats and Out of Control, but crap, I waited in line at 5pm to get front, center, and one person behind New Order. Did I have to wait till 10pm (5 hours!!!) to see them play? The one person in front of me was in line at 10:30AM, so I shouldn’t feel too bad. He didn’t have to deal with the large white guys moshing behind us, though.

On another note, the New Order crowd seemed fairly diverse, with a much smaller asian crowd than I expected. Many more middle aged white guys.

Hookey did a little synth drumming for the Blue Monday encore, and tossed out his drum sticks afterwards. I touched the stick, but wasn’t able to grab hold of it. ARGH!

Finally, Bernard Sumner and Mark Hamill. Separated at birth? You decide.

Tonight, I proxied for Betty Yee at the Democratic County Central Committee meeting. As a substitute for August Longo, who’s sick, I played back-up to the back-up… I’m the man, behind the man, behind the woman.

There were two resolutions. One to continue research into a Precinct Captain proposal, for voter outreach, and one for a feasibility study of suicide barriers on the Golden Gate Bridge. Both passed without any objections or abstentions. What’s really odd was the number of people who chimed in on how good an idea the Precinct Captain idea was… pointless, since we voted for this unanimously anyways, but extended the meeting by about half an hour.

All in all, if I didn’t show up 1 1/2 hours early, I would have enjoyed the experience much more. I learned quite a bit, and I’ll have more input, if I get to proxy again in the future. I guess I didn’t need to watch those four episodes of the West Wing for prep. Thanks, August, it was great.

I just ordered the 9.95 all you can eat in-state calling Broadvoice line. They give more calling options, greater flexbility (use w/any device), and a lower rate. Plus, I can you X-Ten’s X-Lite product with it. If the service quality equal to or better than Vonage’s I’ll switch. I want to enable Asterisk in the next few months and if that works, the office will have a Virtual PBX. Way cool.

The mystery is over. The 49ers chose Alex Smith (Mr. Potential) over Aaron Rodgers (Mr. California). He’ll make 50 million over the next 6 years, if he stays with the Niners. I bet Chad the Niners make the playoffs this year (with 5-1 odds). May the football gods smile upon San Francisco this season.

I’ve decided to stop spending my dev time working on the blog, and switch to Tobias’ excellent Typo. In the 6 months that I’ve been on rails, I’ve developed maybe 200 LOC for my blog, while Tobias has got 1400 (not including tests). I give up, and I’m a wuss. I’ll practice on other projects. Sue me. Edit layout, and then, back onto Rails development.