The wife and I decided to catch the nickelback concert at the dome here.  I was able to get tickets a few days before they went on sale to the general public, picked them up on Tuesday with a Citibank code I found on the Internet or something.  If I was thinking I would have bought all I could then tried to resell them, the concert was sold out and 1 was going for as much as I paid for the pair.

Honestly, I wasn’t terribly stoked up for Nickelback, I like their music well enough but I was more interested in seeing Shinedown and Breaking Benjamin.  All three bands play about the same kind of music.

The opening opening opening act was Sick Puppies.  They played for about 25min or so and didn’t totally suck…they only kinda sucked.  Over all they were O.K. but they didn’t quite know how to work the crowd like the bands that have toured more…it’ll come with experience I suppose.

Shinedown was up next.  I had anticipated these guys more than anyone else.  Some of their music is “tragic” but over all it’s pretty decent.  It’s got a good beat, some decent guitar and an O.K. voice over.  I went into this concert a Shinedown fan and came out liking them a little less.  The band leader is nothing but flat gay.  He was a pussy on stage with some of the things he said to the crowd “the women look so beautiful tonight…blah blah blah…” later on he said something about “i never had any brothers, and I’d like to apologize to (the other band members) because I’ve been a prick the past couple days…” dude seriously?  This kind of shit doesn’t matter to me, I’m here to party…kick it in the ass and lets go.  I wouldn’t pay to see these guys again.

Breaking Benjamin was up next.  They looked like your clean cut midwestern rock band.  There was nothing “bad ass” about these guys, they pretty much looked like the music they sing.  I haven’t been a big fan of these guys and seeing them live didn’t really change that any.

Then came on Nickelback.  They were loud…god damn loud.  They had some decent pyrotechnics, lots of fire and firecrackers.  They played the crowd really well, had a decent amount of banter and put on a generally good show.  If you know their music you either love it or hate it…it seems like there are no middle ground fans for these guys.  They sing the same type of song over and over again with slightly different words and roughly the same beat.  Overall, I do like the style of music.  I came out of this concert appreciating the show Nickelback puts on.

I think the money for this show was worth it.  It got to be a little long, standing there with no sitting.  We were packed in pretty good…constantly bumping in to sweaty people.  I wasn’t a big fan of that, I think if I went to another concert I would get a seat instead of standing room.  We’ll see, I like going to concerts…I think it’s a good value for my entertainment dollar.

I heard on the news the other day that Mindy McCready will be featured in a video produced by Vivid entertainment released April 19th.  They have touted interviews with her talking about various hookups with Rodger Clemens, Dean Cain and some stuff with Alan Jackson.  It doesn’t sound like she goes in to detail about the stuff with Alan Jackson.  From what I’ve heard she will be performing in the video with her current boyfriend…but given her decline in looks over the years…I’m not sure it’s worth watching.

And millions of women see their dreams shattered…

Ricky Martin announces he is gay

Martin, who has previously dodged questions about his sexual orientation, finally ended years of speculation with a post on his website

Singer Ricky Martin has ended years of speculation about his sexuality by declaring himself “a fortunate homosexual man”.

Martin, who has previously dodged questions about his sexual orientation, finally came out on his website, saying the birth of his two sons and writing his memoirs had led to his decision.

Writing in both English and Spanish, the Puerto Rico-born singer, who has sold more than 60 million albums worldwide, said: “To keep living as I did up until today would be to indirectly diminish the glow that my kids where (sic) born with.”

The 38-year-old crossover star, whose biggest worldwide hit was Livin’ la Vida Loca, said: “Many people told me: ‘Ricky it’s not important’, ‘it’s not worth it’, ‘all the years you’ve worked and everything you’ve built will collapse’, ‘many people in the world are not ready to accept your truth, your reality, your nature’.

“Because all this advice came from people who I love dearly, I decided to move on with my life not sharing with the world my entire truth. Allowing myself to be seduced by fear and insecurity became a self-fulfilling prophecy of sabotage. Today I take full responsibility for my decisions and my actions.”

Martin, whose sons were born to a surrogate mother in 2008, said he knew writing his as-yet unpublished memoirs was going to help free him from things that “were too heavy for me to keep inside … Enough is enough. This has to change. This was not supposed to happen 5 or 10 years ago, it is supposed to happen now. Today is my day, this is my time, and this is my moment.

“These years in silence and reflection made me stronger and reminded me that acceptance has to come from within and that this kind of truth gives me the power to conquer emotions I didn’t even know existed.

“What will happen from now on? It doesn’t matter. I can only focus on what’s happening to me in this moment. The word “happiness” takes on a new meaning for me as of today. It has been a very intense process.

“Every word that I write in this letter is born out of love, acceptance, detachment and real contentment. Writing this is a solid step towards my inner peace and vital part of my evolution.

“I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man. I am very blessed to be who I am.”

Martin, who rose to fame with Latin boy band Menudo, became a solo artist in 1990. In 1994 he played a bartender and singer in the US TV soap General Hospital. He later starred on Broadway and started his own foundation to fight child-trafficking and protect children’s rights.

Since I’m spending 3 hours out of every day at the gym I’m listening to quite a bit more music, my lex & terry podcast doesn’t quite fill out the whole day anymore.  This has lead to me delving into the depths of this device a little more than before.  I have checked out a few different functions…some is good, some is bad.

The random function on this thing works a little different than I’ve seen in other devices.  I’m not entirely sure when it determines the “random” order, but it seems to hold that order until you turn random off play a song (was a pod cast in my case) hook it up to the computer to transfer more music (pod cast in my case) listen to said podcast and turn random on again.  What seems obvious is that when you hit shuffle, it determines and order and saves that list somewhere.  When you add/remove files on the device it reads the file list, makes a change to the db and that causes the random order to be changed.  It seems to me that with the zune I could turn random off then back on again to get a different random order.  This is kind of a pain for me because I don’t always listen to music.  I might listen to some music for a bit, then decide I want to rock out a podcast.  When that finishes I might decide I want to listen to music again.  When I go back to the music list and hit play, it starts at the beginning and plays the songs through the “random” list exactly like it had previously.  I need to skip forward through the list a bit until I come to the point I left off (or after obviously).  Even if I don’t hit play at the top of the list…I scroll down a bit, then hit play it will play the song I’m on…then run through the “random” list exactly as it did the last time.  This is kind of a pain for me, but whatever.  I can skip ahead.

The Walkman functions just like a usb drive when you hook it up to the computer.  This allows you to drag and drop music to and from the device.  That is a nice feature to have, but it also presents a problem.  The Blackberry will ask, when you connect it to a computer, if you would like it to go into storage mode.  If you chose no, it just charges off the usb cable and functions like it would without being attached.  The Walkman ceases to function and is just a usb drive.  You can’t listen to music while it is charging on the computer.  This is kind of an issue for me as I’m listening to it 8hrs a day at the office.  That is a perfect time to charge the device, but I’m not able to.

Building on that, the battery life on the sucker is perfect.  I would bet I get 40ish hours if not slightly more on a full charge.  I’ve never had it go dead on me, and I listen to it every day at the office.  I might remember to plug it in to charge over the weekend, or maybe not…it’s battery life is really nice.

Something that urks me in general about mp3′s is that I cannot find a satisfactory comprehensive software package to handle my music library.  I’ve bitched about this before, but to me this seems like a decent need that someone is not fulfilling.  I’d even pay 50 bucks or so for a good software package that does all I want it to.  I have not yet tried iTunes, and that might be my next move…but from what I’ve read that thing has it’s problems as well.