The show had a great lighting display. Some songs flowed through the light show. Here is the set list for the first night.

We also went on August 25th’s show. I have to say that was the BEST Radiohead show that I’ve ever been (and I’ve been to 5). My friend also agreed. We were closer this time in Section J2, Row 11. The binoculars came in handy and the set list was amazing. They included songs from Thom’s album as well as a Neil Young cover song, “Tell Me Why”.

Our view for Monday’s show:

This past weekend on Sunday, I finally did one of my destination ride from the San Gabriel Valley to Seal Beach. My buddy Rich and I decided to do this ride from his home in South El Monte to Seal Beach. We took the Rio Hondo and San Gabriel bike path. Took us 4 hours and 33 minutes to do the 56 mile round trip. It was tough because on the way back, Rich started experiencing some back and knee aches. Not that I was doubting him but I was impressed that he was okay after the ride. Yes, he did take a few hours to recover but he wasn’t complaining and was up and about the following day. I was aching for a few days after my 48 miler 2 weeks ago. Big kudos to him on that.

Here’s one of our many breaks over looking the San Gabriel River on our way back from Seal Beach.

Next destination is a ride to Orange County!

Radiohead concert August 24th and 25th @ The Hollywood Bowl! Tickets go on sale this Saturday at 10 AM. You know I’ll be going. Most likely to both shows. I can’t wait! It’s been too long since the last concert.

1. Radiohead‘s In Rainbows album
2. My new Mac Mini
3. My new Uninterruptible Power Supply

I did get some Halo 3 in the mix but I must digress. In Rainbows has been playing non-stop on my work computers and my iPod. The more I listen to this album, the more I love it. Yes that’s right, love it! I find myself looking forward to Jigsaw Falling Into Places everytime the album loops around. I still haven’t decided if this is top 3 of my RH albums. It’s so hard because the more you listen to it, the more you enjoy an album. This happened to Amnesiac and Kid A. I didn’t like those album at first but when I started to listen to them more and more, it grew on me. In my opinion In Rainbows is another masterpiece.

I used the hell out of my Mac Mini this week. It’s been on 5 days straight. I’ve been making it my own by installing various freeware and testing out Parallels. I got my laptop’s WinXP loaded on my my Mac Mini. Only thing left is to get an activation key from Microsoft. My iTunes is setup similar to my PC but I don’t think I’m going to reformat my iPod with the Mac. The PC has all the interesting historical data like the star ratings and the times I’ve played a song. It’s so stupid how little things like that makes such a good experience in using an iPod. Moving it over to the Mac is a cumbersome task. My entire library is on my Linux fileserver.

I also had to replace my UPS this weekend. I got it setup but was interested in getting it to shutdown my server in the event of a power failure. The model I got was an APC BACK UPS XS 900. It came with software for Macs and PCs. Unfortunately none for Linux. I found out that there is an open-source solution called apcupsd. It basically are scripts that allows you to do shutdowns for APC branded UPS. I also found that people have used my UPS with this software solution successfully. I installed the source code and compiled it. Everything is working fine, I think. I’m in the middle of running various tests. So far it passed the few early tests. I need to simulate a complete power failure and see if it shuts down my server. May not sound fun to you but gobs of fun for a geek like me.

1. Radiohead’s highly anticipated 7th album, In Rainbows (October 10th)
2. An Apple system with the new Leopard operating system (In October)
3. NBA 2K8 Xbox 360 game (October 2nd)

I’ve already pre-ordered the game and will be placing my order for the Radiohead’s disc box set soon ($80). I am still debating about adding another computer system. It’ll probably be a little after the initial release of Leopard just so I can read about other people’s experience. It’ll be my first OSX system.

Saturday night spent sometime playing so poker. Again I lost only one buy-in. I was up alot but seem to lose all my gainings in the last 30 minutes of play to Greg. This has happened probably the last 3 times I’ve played with the guy. Again, minimizing the loss was still maintained.

Sunday night I spent with my college buddies with some good BBQ and drinking games. We played a few drinking games and polished away more than half of the beer that was brought. The food was delicious and the creme brulee was prepared by Prince and Sandy. They sure know fine dining. Also congrats to them on their engagement. Like I’ve said before, this is the year is the year of engagements, weddings, and babies. The night ended with a couple of hours of fragging on Halo 2. It was fun to get reacquainted with that game. Makes me want to buy a 360 more. I must hold off on that purchase until the end of the bachelor party this year.

Monday was spent watching Superman Returns and dining out at Outbacks Steakhouse in Long Beach. Yes, a Fourth of July weekend at an Australian themed restaurant. The party moved on to a karaoke bar in Garden Grove where we sang the night away or until midnight or so. Superman by-the-way, was great! It really went back to the roots of Superman and made it better.

Tonight, we went to the local 4th of July fair in Long Beach. This featured much of your carnival games, rides, and food. Oh the food was fantastic! We had some taquitos, tacos, and elotes asados (roasted corn on a stick). Washed it all down with a cup of horchata and a churro for dessert. Yes your traditional Mexican meal on the 4th of July. As you can tell that’s pretty much what the 4th should represent. The many different culture that has been integrated to the daily lives of people in America. The fireworks was pretty disappointing this year. First of all, we thought the fireworks was going to be launched from Queen Mary. Instead it was launched somewhere out side near the coast. It was pretty far away and the palm trees were hiding parts of the show. It was a very lack-luster display. We saw better fireworks on the way back from Long Beach. All in all, a rather mild ending to my long weekend.

Unfortunately, I failed to bring a camera to all the events mentioned above. No pictures for now. I’ve just haven’t been my phototaking self these days.

It was 19:40 when we grab some drinks and found our seats on the South Terrace level at Row B Seat 28 and 26. We were to the band’s left. The venue was much smaller than I thought and the bugs were a-plenty! When 20:00 came along, the opening band, Deerhoof came out to perform. The trio consisted of 2 tall caucasian and 1 little asian girl. I’m inclined to say she was probably Japanese because when she sang, actually more like made funny noises, she sounded like a Japanese anime character with their cute pitch. They played for about an hour. Some songs were pretty good while others was pretty odd.

The crowds lathargically filed into their seats. It was not until 23:10 when the stadium began to resemble a sold out concert and the skies over Griffith Park began to dim. The stage crew in the mean-time was setting up all the instruments for the band. Suddenly the lights goes out and the sets began!

Playlist was as followed:

01 Airbag
02 The National Anthem
03 There There
04 15 Step
05 Exit Music
06 Bodysnatchers
07 My Iron Lung
08 Nude
09 Videotape
10 I Might Be Wrong
11 Climbing Up The Walls
12 All I Need
13 Pyramid Song
14 Spooks
15 Idioteque
16 Myxomatosis
17 Bangers ‘n Mash
18 Bones

Encore 1
19 Like Spinning Plates
20 Fake Plastic Trees
21 Down Is The New Up
22 Paranoid Android

Encore 2
23 House of Cards
24 True Love Waits
25 Everything In Its Right Place

More details of the sets can be found here on ateaseweb.com. The most moving song IMO was Fake Plastic Trees where the crowd was basically singing along. Paranoid Android was another one I remembered where the highs and lows brought the crowds to frenzy and calmly lulled them down.

We quickly exited the show and walked down the hill with the rest of the crowd. I was exhausted from standing the whole time. My knees started to buckle a little towards the end of the show, but the walked certainly helped.

I’ve read that there’s another boring version of this song out there. This one is remade to be a bit more upbeat. Hopefully we’ll find it in the next RH album. In the meantime I’m waiting for Thom’s The Eraser album.

Reminder: Tickets for Radiohead’s LA shows go on sale tomorrow morning at 10am for June 29th and 30th. Go get your tickets! I can’t wait to buy mine.

Edit: (11:47PM) Just saw last week’s OC episode and guess what was the last song? No other than Radiohead’s Fog (Again). Excellent!