Friday, November 07, 2008

#34



Dave Matthews Band plays #34, at the Hollywood Bowl, October 2, 2007.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Sour Grapes

"The best-laid plans of mice and men / Go oft awry"

- Robert Burns, To A Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest, With The Plough

Apparently, the CRS is to the College of Law, as speed limits and pants are to Homer Simpson: a suggestion.

Here is what I propose: the college should just do away with the CRS and simply hand out pre-filled Form 5s to students, who can then proceed either to Palma Hall or to the OUR and pay the assessed fees immediately. It will not only save everybody the time and effort needed to craft a class schedule, pre-enlist, fill out a Form 5 which, at the end of the day, are all pointless anyway; it will also save much-needed bandwidth because people no longer need to access CRS. This would also do away with validation, checking and assessment. Imagine how easy registration would be.

They can leave the electives to the students. They just need to make sure that electives with the right number of units, which are not in conflict with any of the predetermined courses (and sections), are actually available for the student to take.

Just a thought.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Monday, November 03, 2008

Reliving the Moments

"When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band."

- David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust

My wishlist for my first office Kris Kringle contained a solitary item: the Eraserheads' Cutterpillow album (I think I just dated myself). I was fresh off college, it was my first job and I was so cheap (some will say that I still am) that I was willing to wait until a few weeks before Christmas before finally getting my hands on my own copy of the album. That album, incidentally, went platinum the day after they launched it at the UP Sunken Garden.

A few years and a few more albums later (including one - Natin99 - which was brought to the US by a friend when I was there, signed by the members of the band), I now get to enjoy more luxuries in life, like not waiting until Christmas to get the Heads' latest - and most probably, really, last - album. The Reunion Concert is their first live album, containing all 15 songs performed by the band last August 30, before Ely's heart went into "overdrive." The best part about the album, of course, is that I am actually in it (yes, along with 30,000 other people counting down, and chanting "group hug").

I was planning to go to Music One before going to work earlier today, but let's just say that I got lucky. The press release said that the album was going to be released on November 3 - today. That is why I was pleasantly surprised to find Odyssey selling the album as early as last Saturday. The saleslady told me, matter-of-factly, that they were releasing it early ahead of everybody else. I don't know if that's alright, but, who am I to complain? I spent the entire weekend reliving the best concert I have been to in recent years. It never gets old.