I caught wind of Pearl Jam a little later than most, when I made the transition from listening to Pop and R&B to Alternative music in the mid-90s. The first Pearl Jam album I bought was Vitalogy, and I was immediately hooked (it remains my favorite Pearl Jam album to this day). Next thing I knew, I was obsessing over the songs, the lyrics, and doing things like waiting outside the record store at the mall at around midnight trying to be one of the first people to get his hands on Yield.

I saw my first Pearl Jam show on July 21, 1998 and I've been going to pretty much every Seattle show possible (plus a Phoenix show at one point) since then. Anyone who follows the band closely knows their history, their penchant for shying away from the media and fan attention to which other bands often succumb. All you have to do is listen to "Not For You" to get an idea of their general outlook on fame and attention (although it has admittedly changed slightly in recent years).

Fast forward to the present, and I'm a 30 year old dad who has been exposed to a lot more of life, a lot more music, and yet my love for Pearl Jam and my admiration for its frontman have not waned. I take pleasure in deciphering Eddie Vedder's lyrics, following his evolution (if you'll forgive the pun) as a musician and songwriter, and in knowing that he's a fellow Seattleite.

To that last point, it just so happened that a family friend knew of a local event that Eddie Vedder was most likely going to attend tonight. When my wife told me this, I scoffed at the thought of him actually attending, and didn't think there was any chance we'd see him, let alone meet him, if we decided to attend the event. Nevertheless, my wife was more optimistic and pressed the issue (for my benefit). Thank the gods for that, because I'll be darned if I didn't actually meet and speak to Eddie Vedder tonight!

Toward the end of the event, my wife, my daughter and I sneakily worked our way in Eddie's direction until we were literally two feet away from him and his wife, who also attended the event. Being the pansy that I am, I couldn't work up the courage to turn and say anything, but my amazingly courageous wife could, and she said something along the lines of "Eddie, I'm really sorry to bother you but my husband is like your biggest fan." To that point, he looked at me and said "Oh, okay," as if he had never heard that line before. ;) He then commented on the event and I kind of just stood there in awe of the situation (like I said: pansy).

Handling the situation with more grace than me, he extended his hand out and shook my hand. My wife then asked if we could take pictures with him, but he said something along the lines of "How about we do it next time when there aren't so many people around?" In other words, a nice way of saying "Thanks, but no thanks." Given what I wrote previously about him and the band not wanting to attract unnecessary attention to themselves, I wasn't surprised by the answer and certainly respected it. At that point, my wife tells me that Eddie's wife kind of gave her a look like "yeah, that's not a good idea" but at the same time, Eddie said "Thanks" and gave me a look that said "you're doing me a favor" that was sincere enough for me to believe I really was. I told him it was nice to meet him, and we then went on our way.

Unfortunately, that quick turn of events means I don't have any photographic proof of our meeting, and it also means that I can't really show my daughter many years from now that she was in the presence of such a legend, but the story (which I know I will tell many, many times and to anyone who wants to listen) alone will have to suffice. It's hard to describe how I feel about the whole situation. It's very surreal, especially since it's something I've played out in my mind in the past. It was even more surreal to hear his voice on the radio only minutes later as Just Breathe played. I'm thankful to have such an amazing wife who basically made sure I met him, knowing what a big deal it would be to me. I'm also extremely grateful and proud to be able to say...

"I shook Eddie Vedder's hand."

Anyone who lives outside of L.A. that roots for the Lakers also probably likes the Yankees and Cowboys, and is the worst kind of sports fan.

The quote comes from an article titled Stuck between the Thunder and a hard place that is a great read if you're a disgruntled old Seattle SuperSonics fan.

For whatever reason, there exists a scenario in which Items added to a previously empty CheckedListBox and then subsequently checked using the SetItemChecked() method show up in the CheckedListBox as unchecked. Here is some sample code demonstrating my usage of the various methods:

// add the item
myCheckedListBox.Items.Add(itemToAdd);

// find the newly added item and change its CheckState to checked
myCheckedListBox.SetItemChecked(myCheckedListBox.Items.IndexOf(itemToAdd), true);

In my particular application, the above calls are made within a loop, where itemToAdd represents a different item upon each iteration. What I see in my application is that, if myCheckedListBox is empty (i.e. contains no items) when the loop starts executing, when the loop is finished, the added items will be visible, but none of them will be checked. However, if myCheckedListBox already contains items when the loop starts executing, the newly added items are both visible and checked, as desired (and as advertised by the documentation of the code in question).

I researched this problem quite a bit and, unfortunately, found nothing that explained this particular scenario. The closest explanation I could find was a six-year-old discussion of the implications of loading items into a non-visible, data-bound CheckedListBox. Though the issue does seem very similar to the one I'm experiencing, my CheckedListBox is neither data-bound (I add and remove items manually) nor is it non-visible. Nevertheless, I experience the same symptom.

Whether the problem is really a limitation of the .NET framework or simply a pesky bug, I needed to find a way to work around it. Luckily, I was able to find a relatively straightforward workaround. To address the problem, I added some checks in my code for the special case where items are being added in the loop when the CheckedListBox was previously empty. If this scenario is encountered, after the loop finishes executing, I've added some code that iterates through the newly added items in another loop and sets their state to checked again:

// iterate through all items
for (int i = 0; i < myCheckedListBox.Items.Count; i++)
{
   // change the state to checked
   myCheckedListBox.SetItemChecked(i, true);
}

It seems redundant to do so, of course, but something about this happening outside of the initial loop execution leads to the desired results. And in the end, it's all about achieving the desired results, right?

static string bizarreJargon = "__VOTE4PEDRO__";
static string moreBizarreJargon = "__SWEETMOOLAH__";

Awesome.

Tonight, the fun continues as I find myself completely banned from accessing Google Reader at all:

I wish I could say I was doing some mad fancy hacking to achieve this feat, but all I was doing was using Google Reader's built-in email feature.

When I read feeds, I simultaneously act as a human version of my6sense for my wife. Most of the time, I'm either sending her links to the latest Seattle Seahawks news or bizarre stuff on BuzzFeed. Occasionally when doing so, if I've sent a few emails directly from Google Reader in a relatively short amount of time, I'm presented with a CAPTCHA dialog to prove that I'm human. This has always seemed a little odd in itself, since it seems a bit far-fetched to imagine spammers using Google Reader for spamming purposes, but I've nevertheless played along since it isn't too big a hindrance.

Tonight, given the insane frenzy of what's been going on with the Seahawks as of late, I had plenty of feed items to send my wife's way. After a handful, I was presented with a CAPTCHA, per usual. However, after sending only a few more, I started noticing that the emails were failing to send (Google Reader's Ajax-driven operations typically show a notification near the top of the page that indicates whether they succeeded or failed). Since the email feature seemed to no longer be working, I tried to mark the feed item I was trying to send as unread so I could send the email later. However, that operation failed as well.

My next plan of action was to get out of Google Reader completely and come back a little later. When I returned, I was presented with the "We're sorry..." message captured above because I might be "sending automated queries." I've been banned for several hours now.

I've already filled out Google's form for reporting ban-related errors, but it seems ridiculous that I would have to fill out a form or wait for the ban to lift at all. After all, what is the CAPTCHA there for, if not to determine that I'm not a script running some automated query?

Hopefully this gets straightened out soon, 'cause I miss my feeds.

"You're a dog!"
"I'm a cop!"

Poochinski would have automatically become my favorite TV show of all time:

Via BuzzFeed.

[The driver in front of me] slammed on their brakes to avoid something. What does my car do? It slams on its brakes too. It is so reliable I no longer impulsively reach for my brakes.

While the subject matter of his post is fascinating and shows just how close we're getting to the kind of automated car safety that can save thousands of lives per year, it's still a little scary to think that someone could step out of one of these newer, tech-heavy cars and into an older, technically challenged car like my four-banger '05 Civic, and actually be more at risk because of a trained apathy toward manual braking.

Whenever I think about the cars of the future, I always try to remind myself that there will still be cars from the 80s, 90s and 2000s on the road, even when the cars from the 10s, 20s and 30s start to make up the majority. It will be very interesting to see how seemingly second nature muscle memory reactions change due to technology like that mentioned in Robert Scoble's post, and how it affects those who find themselves driving equipped and unequipped cars on a regular or even semi-regular basis.

http://www.finalstar.com/music/aloft.mp3

If you do have a listen, please let me know what you think. And if you're into making music and haven't played around with GarageBand yet, you're missing out.