Jim Goings

Talk about a double-header!  Sonata Arctica and Nightwish together in one concert is a recipe for explosions of awesome.  It tasted great.

Sonata Arctica was fairly new to me - I’d only heard a couple of their songs before.  Their keytar player had me jonsing to go though!  That guy rocks!  The lead singer has a great voice and knew how to work the crowd.  Excellent songs (for the genre) and good stage presence overall.  A+ (just as good as Nightwish’s show)

Nightwish entered with the same epic fanfare as the last show (a few months ago iirc), but it still worked like a charm.  These guys are some of the best musicians in the business - they have perfected their craft and just have fun on stage.  I love the new singer, but wow did she choose a poor wardrobe and hair style for this show.  She wore some sort of spandex that had a really low crotch which just looked weird and was quite distracting.  Her hair went from long and black to short, feathered, combed back, and dyed two or three colors.  Blech.  She’s a great singer though and a wonderful replacement for Tarja.  A+

The roseland is a venue with a mixed review.  One one hand, it’s small and offers a very intimate experience with the performers.  On the other hand, the sound system is crap.  It’s usually too loud - to the point of being distorted.  The mix is usually crap, with drum bass overpowering everything else.  Vocals are often hard to understand and guitar solos are often drowned out.  The best venue in the NW that I’ve been too is the Clark County Ampitheater which had awesome sound quality.  The roseland however does not.  Boo.  D+

We spotted the hummer owner parking on the other side of the street today. He parked legally and paid… But get this: he put an empty parking citation envelope on his dash, presumably so that when his time expired it would look like he already got a ticket.

We also discovered that he’s the manager of Aura, a night club that we frequent for weekday happy hours.  I really fought the urge to say something to him, but realized that nothing good would come out of it.  He isn’t going to care that he cost my company several hundred dollars.  And most likely he’d just kick us out of the club which would be bad for everyone since they have grub food.

Here you can see the hummer with the “ticket” on it.

And here you can see the empty envelope.  (yes, we checked - it’s a decoy!)

And here you can see that his parking permit expired at 4:21PM… picture taken at 5:15pm or so.

The movers we hired had an amazing truck driver that was able to put a tractor with a 53′ trailer right into our back lot without even flinching (inches on each side - it was crazy).  While they unload the truck - some a**hole parks his hummer right next the driveway in the no parking zone.

As a result, they couldn’t get the trucks out of the back lot which prevented the other two trucks from unloading.  The space was so tight by the freight elevator that we couldn’t even park the trucks on the street and roll the stuff around the sidewalk - there was no room for anything past the trailers to get to the elevator.  So we were stuck until this Hummer was moved.

I called the police and told them that this guy was costing us a few hundred dollars an hour.  They were Johnny on the Spot and the parking enforcement dude showed up with a huge grin on his face.  He was absolutely thrilled to ticket this guy.  In fact, he got two tickets - $60 for parking in a no parking zone and $60 for not having a front license plate.  He then slapped a red “Tow” sticker on the windshield.

The tow truck showed up about 15 minutes later - but because there was another car in front of the Hummer, he couldn’t do much.

His dollys weren’t beefy enough to handle the weight of the Hummer and the parking break was set, so the only option would be to drag it out, likely causing drive train issues for the Hummer owner.  He called in his buddy who had a different towing device that extended out and could reach the hummer.  They lifted the front of the hummer up and the front of the tow truck came up too - it was pretty cool to behold.

I snapped this pic just as the tow truck’s front tires hit the ground after being about 1 ft off the ground.  They continued to jockey the hummer, just inches from the back of the Jetta and finally got it into a position where they could hook it up to the larger tow truck.

Unfortunately, the with the rear wheels still locked in park, they had to crawl under the Hummer and disconnect the drive shaft.  Here are some choice quotes from the tow truck dude while they were under the Hummer:

The Jive van was spotted at Home Depot earlier this evening. Some big dude was loading a ladder, a shop vac, and a dolly into it. I wonder what’s going on over at Jive…

Made some tummy pie with Simone last night.