I totally read it on Some Guy’s Blog

The blog has finally found its final home: http://blog.jimvanfleet.com/

The site may have some momentary outages in the coming weeks as TextDrive puts out fires, but hopefully I’m not the one causing them! In general, though, it should be available from now on!

Apologies for being too tied up to get a review out this week. I had a good excuse, I promise.

In exchange, I’ll mention what I’m listening to these days.

• Iron And Wine: Our Endless Numbered Days

‘Passing Afternoon’ is an absolutely gorgeous song. Kudos to Megan’s friend Marta for making the recommendation that broke the camel’s back.

• Antony And The Johnsons: I Am A Bird Now

Courtesy of Pitchfork—they may be snotty, but they do like good music. This record is quite unlike anything I’ve ever heard, but I like it.

That’s all for now!

I’ve accepted an offer to work at Alterthought in Richmond, VA about 300 yards from where I previously worked. I’ll be working on Java web development, as usual.

I was really excited to hear that they use the same major frameworks and IDE as I do (WebWork , Spring, Hibernate, and Eclipse respectively.) That means I should be able to jump right in and help, more or less. I believe that Alterthought will be a great help to me in my personal growth, as well as enabling me to contribute back to the open-source community.

More as it develops, dear readers!

It’s amazing how music has the power to inspire, to transcend physical and temporal boundaries, to conjure memories of times long ago, to bare souls, and entice listeners to bare their own. Billie Holliday’s Lady In Satin is a one-of-a-kind record and perhaps her consummate work.

When Ray Ellis, the orchestra director, was asked how he felt about Lady In Satin shortly after the recording, he responded that he not only hated the experience, but also the recording itself. This was Billie Holliday, one of the most important jazz vocalists of all time, and he thought she had lost it completely. Lady Day was known for her unique approach to vocals; she never learned to read music, she’d change tempo mid-song, etc. She could always rely on her beautiful voice and direct style to silence the critics. That voice had long since abandoned her after hard years of drug and alcohol addiction. In fact, Lady In Satin would be her last record before she died one year later, at the age of 39.

At times, she sounds like she’s struggling to sing the material, with her rendition of I Get Along Without You Very Well. seeming to stick in her throat. Her accusatory, titular cry in You’ve Changed is a powerful indictment of a fallen angel, delivered without a hint of self-incrimination.

This record is a hell of an experience. With all its flaws, there’s an incredible beauty in the recording, of something altogether indescribable—by me personally, at any rate.

I decided to put my resume online, so I won’t lose it in the future.

The good news is that I’ve been offered a full-time position at the company I’ve been working for since Christmas.

The bad news is that the salary they’ve offered represents a serious paycut (about 20%) of what they’re currently paying me as a contractor.

The benefits are good (perhaps very good), but I just don’t know if the numbers work together. Megan and I just did our budget, and it looks just right to me at my current salary.

I am very nervous right now, but it’s the good kind of nervous that comes with a big opportunity.

I’ll make sure to keep all of you up to date on what’s going on.

CompUSA (!!) has a 40 hour TiVo unit for free when you sign up for a one-year membership. You hear people talk about TiVo all the time, but I am telling you, something like TiVo will change the way we all watch television. TiVo has my strongest possible recommendation if you ever watch any TV.

I might make a page and describe everything I do with TiVo in the next couple of days, but serious, for $12 a month over the next year, you shouldn’t need your arm twisted.

It just struck me that I had a great experience with a product, and didn’t let anyone know.

I have four cats now, and when they decide to pee on the sofa, that’s not a happy day. I was very worried about having our living room smelling like cat urine.

I ordered a cleaning solution recipe online and it worked great. It cost $5 and it honestly worked on our sofa.

Thought I’d let everyone know.

(Originally written on July 26)

I’m going to start with this one because I’ve been in a pretty crappy mood for the past 24 hours or so. I completely forgot about an important meeting yesterday, and mysterious bugs in Rails are keeping me from sharing my project with the team. Thus, like this album on the charts, I’m in a bit of a freefall. I’m sure Mark would find that only appropriate.

There was a time some years ago when this album would easily have been in my top ten, if not number 1. Mark Eitzel was the first artist I really followed. After I discovered Mark, and his band, American Music Club (on an album to be named later here in this series), I joined the (apparently now defunct) Firefly mailing list in 1994. Firefly was the first real Internet community that I felt like I was a part of—as the youngest member. I bought all the Eitzel related records I could get my hands on. I made mix tapes for myself consisting entirely of their songs. I included a song from them on the mix tapes I made for other people. I listened to my favorite albums like Songs of Love Live, Mercury, and Lovers Leap USA (which was stolen from me) over and over again. But the jazzy tones on this record and the overall grey feeling made an indelible impression, and that’s what lands 60 Watt Silver Lining on the top of the AMC/Eitzel stack.

Unfortunately for this record’s overall ranking, it was on the player during a part of my life I don’t recall that fondly. My freshman year of college was a real downer. Compared to the rest of my college life where I was either partying or dealing with the consequences of partying, I really didn’t do anything my freshman year except piss off my friends back home and play Diablo. Don’t get me wrong, though, Diablo is a great game.

It does make me wonder: do depressing albums like this face a disadvantage when facing the inevitable ranking? Wouldn’t anyone, regardless of their disposition, prefer happy feelings to sad ones?

Paul Kedrosky is a venture capitalist who recently spotted the the Strangest SEC Filing Ever

If you follow politics at all, you should read it.