Jason Crowther’s Blog

A while back (years ago, in fact) I stumbled on Hayseed Dixie (probably via KPIG, the home of all things good.) They’re a bluegrass band that covers all sorts of rock music, including AC/DC (their namesake), KISS, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and many others. Good stuff!

The other day, I was messing around on the Live Music Archive (if you haven’t been over there lately, you can now stream most shows; no more downloading, woo-hoo!) and saw that they had a some shows up. Oh man, I was on ‘em like white on rice. As usual, the live stuff is way better than the album. Bonus! the front man shares some hilarious stories in between the songs.

At the moment, I’m listening to 2007-05-25. The story about someone parking in a handicapped parking space that opens in the show is a riot.

Update: the Hayseed Dixie profile page on Last.fm has some entertaining videos.

If you’ve run a marathon or thinking about running a marathon (either dreaming or are seriously committed) keep an eye out for Spirit of the Marathon. Its a documentary on the history and modern evolution of the sport. I’m not a big sports history buff (yawn), but this was interesting and light hearted enough to hold my attention for the whole hour and half (two hours if you count hanging around for the DVD extra type stuff post show.)

After delving into the races origins, and early competitions in the Olympics, the story focus on folks training for the 2005 Chicago Marathon at various levels (first timer- lone trainee, first timer- group trainee, repeat marathoners, late onsets, and elites.) I felt right at home with the group first timer group trainee. I almost got choked up at times reliving some of the physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges of both the training process and race day that the profiled runners endured.

A large population of the Syracuse running community made it out to the show (thanks Fleet Feet for the heads up!) including the most of the class ‘07 1st Marathon. A few of which are getting ready for the fast approaching Boston Marathon. I’m still amazed that I trained with these amazing athletes.

At this point, I still don’t know what I’m gonna do in ‘08. Seeing the movie brought out both good and bad memories. I was thinking about giving up on the marathon distance and concentrating on speed at half and shorter distances, but now I’m jonesing for the high of crossing the marathon finish line again. Gonna have to get serious soon if that’s the idea!

Unfortunately, I think in theaters, the movie gonna was a one shot event; keep an eye out for it on DVD.

…to the tune of $7.5 million dollars. Guess that explains why I had a ginormous charge (~$158) from Dreamhost on my credit card statement this month. (mental note, guess I need to get some more referrals!) Being the software business I frequently have nightmares about fat fingered moments like the one that cause the snafu. Ouch.

They quickly sent out an email explaining the situation and saying it would be a day or two before erroneous charges would be cleaned up. How you be mad when they use Homer Simpson in their apology?

So, I’ve been trying to log into my sprint customer account for a few days to update my billing address after my recent change of address. So, I fire up my password key ring and dig out my login credentials. I copy and paste them over and click the login button. Sorry, bad username or password. Ah, ok. Lemme make sure I copy and pasted that right (still absent mindly swap control for command on the Mac every now and again.) Ok, that looks right. Sorry, bad username or password.

Ok, maybe I forgot to update my key ring the last time they forced me change my password (or maybe it was username, since I remember being able to log in with my phone number as my username.) Lemme try the forgot password feature. Bzzt, we’re sorry, but we can’t let you change your password online at the moment. Please call Sprint customer care for more assistance. Funk that, I’ll try again later.

I took few days off and tried it again. Same deal, can’t log in, password reset features says currently not available.

I tried it again this morning. Got in the on the first try with the username and password that I had on file. Way to run a website, Sprint. It ain’t rocket science, ya know?

Another annoyance is my paper bill. Recently, they helpfully reformatted the bill, switching it from the smaller sized paper to full 8 1/2×11″. In the process they dropped useful details like how many minutes each of the lines in my family plan used (ed.- take that back, its just on a different page; in really small type. ugh.) and replaced them with useless boilerplate and full page ads for services that I don’t care about.

I’m pretty sure that all wireless providers suck these days, but do any suck even a little bit less? What do you use, do you like them?

Testing posting via Gnome Blog Poster (via). An easy click and go install for Ubuntu. Makes blog posts about as fast as twitter. Maybe it’ll encourage me to post more. Probably not.