Insert clever tagline here

Inspired by my friends who are participating in the “Julio Challenge” I decided I would take a crack at it. I thought that I’d come up with 30 great acoustic versions of songs. And so, so without further ado my 30 Awesome Acoustic Arrangements. Obvious alliteration is obvious.

Motörhead – Ace Of Spades

Who’d win in a wrestling match, Lemmy or God? Trick question, Lemmy is God. This version of Ace of Spades totally changes the feel of the song. This was actually recorded for a Kronenbourg Beer promotion.

Foo Fighters – Everlong

Quite possibly one of my top 5 favorite acoustic songs, Foo Fighters originally played this in the Howard Stern Show studio.

Cash – Hurt

I took this one from SPG’s list, The Man In Black doing Nine Inch Nails. Not much more explanation necessary.

Metallica – Tuesday’s Gone

Originally a Lynyrd Skynyrd song, Metallica recorded Tuesday’s Gone for their cover album compilation Garage Inc. The song shows their musical talent, and offers a great spin on a classic.

AC/DC – You shook me all night long

Many classic rock songs translate very well into acoustic versions. I just like this song, no real reason why. Ha.

Slash ft. Myles Kennedy – Sweet Child O’ Mine

I’m not really that big of a fan of GNR, but there’s something about Myles Kennedy’s voice and the simple acoustic version of this song. Its stripped down and far from Axl Rose’s “Sha-Na-Na-Na-Na-Knees-KNEES!” in Welcome to the Jungle

Eagles – Hotel California

Another one of those songs that require no explanation.

At this point, I really found myself sucked into the performances on the old MTV Unplugged show.

Aerosmith – Dream On

Oh how the mighty have fallen, now this guy is a judge on a reality show. This is the real Steven Tyler.

STP – Plush

Another of my top 5 all time favorites.

Nirvana – Lake of Fire

Nirvana – Where Did You Sleep Last Night

I suppose I bent the rules a bit by including two Nirvana songs from the same performance. I couldn’t decide which was better, I’ve always been partial to Lake of Fire but I just heard Where Did You Sleep Last Night again tonight while looking these up.

Noel Gallagher – Wonderwall Acoustic

I can never remember which brother caused all the problems in Oasis, but I do like Noel’s version of Wonderwall

Pearl Jam – Jeremy

Keep an eye out for Eddie Vedder’s crazy face.

The Smashing Pumpkins – DISARM

I included this one as a tribute to Billy Corgan’s hair, its also a great song.

Alice In Chains – Down In A Hole

Alice In Chains – Would

Just like Nirvana, I couldn’t pick just one Alice in Chains song from this set. Layne Staley is defiantly missed. RIP

Our Lady Peace – Superman’s Dead

The album Clumsy is one that I dust off every once and a while. OLP’s front man Raine Maida has a very unique sound that really comes through in Superman’s Dead.

Live – The Dolphins Cry

In doing research for this post I learned that Live played live for the last time in 2009 at The Palazzo, which would have been a great show. The Dolphins Cry is one of their best songs, this is Ed Kowalczyk playing it on his own.

Days Of The New – Touch, Peel And Stand

I really don’t know anything about Days of the New, except that I really enjoy this song. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Stone Sour – Bother

What really blew my mind when Stone Sour’s album came out, is that this is the same Corey Taylor AKA #8 of Slipknot. Listen to Bother, and then check out Wait and Bleed

Sugarcult – Memory

A decent pop-punk type band from the late 90′s early 00′s. An acoustic version of one of their most popular songs.

The Best Deceptions – Dashboard

No acoustic song list is without an Emo entry, I figure what better band to represent that genre. I think at one point the crowd is actually louder than he is, that’s kind of cool. I’ll admit it, this song was on my iPod in college.

Cute Without The “E” (Cut From the Team) – Taking Back Sunday

A great slowed down version of a really awesome Taking Back Sunday song. In my top 5.

I also wanted to include a “WTF” section, mainly a couple songs/bands that you wouldn’t imagine playing acoustic sets.

Deftones – Digital Bath

It was hard to find a decent acoustic Deftones song due to some of Chino’s vocal problems at the time. Digital Bath uses some effects on his voice that help it on the acoustic version.

KoRn & Amy Lee – Freak on a Leash

Acoustic Korn seemed strange to me, but with Amy Lee of Evanescence it kind of works. Check it out for yourself.

Shinedown – Simple Man

Another Lynyrd Skynyrd cover makes the list.

The next two songs come from my “Sing Along” playlist from high school and college. Both of these were songs that my friends and I could throw on and we’d all know the words.

Extreme – More Than Words

Mr. Big – To Be With You

Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) – Green day

Great song. Honorable mention to the Rancid live version Video

Tenacious D Wonderboy

The D might not be the most serious band on the list, but you have to appreciate Kyle Gass’s guitar talent.

So that’s my 30, what do you think?

I know its not acoustic, but I have to include a solo that completely changed my opinion of Prince. Solo is @3:30. George Harrison would be proud.

Never trust a geologist from Portugal.

Just like many other people, I have browsed craigslist looking for a good deal. Recently a friend of mine mentioned he was looking for a new car, so we started browsing the Cars & Trucks section to see if there were any bargins to be had. I quickly came across a deal that just had to be too good to be true:

A 2006 Chrysler 300C SRT-8, in what looks to be very good condition, for only $3800. It must be my lucky day. The advertisement lists “Nevada” as its location, and the only method of contact is by email. If you notice the background in the pictures, it looks very green to be Las Vegas. Also, the entire ad appears to be one big image file. Clearly there is something sketchy going on, and I’m sure this isn’t the first advertisement like this on craigslist since they have banners and warnings all over their site about fraud.

However, craigslist warns about people shipping cars and clearly the advertisement says that the car is in Nevada. So I thought I’d have a little fun and contact the “seller” to see what’s going on here. I jumped over to gmail and created a new account. Name: Ross Jefferson, Email: rossylovescars@gmail.com. Then I used my new account to contact our seller, making sure to use wording verbatim from the posting.

After only a few minutes, I received a response.

His email raises all the classic craigslist scam flags. A price that is too good to be true, he is in Portugal but the car is in Detroit, he will pay shipping, and he would like to use eBay as an escrow service (despite the fact that the car isn’t being sold on eBay). Someone seriously shopping for a car should stop here, delete the email, and flag the craigslist post. I’m interested in seeing what would happen if I play along so I continued to chat with “Daniel”. I copied the VIN number he provided and came across something interesting on a google search.

It looks like all the pictures in the ad were scraped from a legitimate car sales site, complete with other information about the car. I emailed Daniel back to see what he would say.

Daniel quickly replied.

It seems like the transaction would go through very easily. eBay would handle the payment, he pays for shipping, and if I don’t like the car I send it back. In order to keep the conversation going, I needed to provide him with a shipping address. I didn’t want to use my own, so I came up with the next best thing.

It was interesting and a little scary that there was actually someone on the other end reading my emails and replying. At first I thought that this was all some automated system replying with standard responses. But when I asked a question, I actually got a response.

Just as he described, 3 hours later I received some very official looking emails from “eBay” about my new purchase.

I was welcomed to eBay Motors and they reiterated how I would be protected through this entire process.

Something else to note, was that the actual message with the directions for payment was filtered by gmail’s spam filter. They even take that into account by sending the following email from “eBay Support”

Once I removed the purchase directions from my spam folder, I saw the action that would kiss my $3800 goodbye. Western Union.

Upon further inspection of these “eBay” emails, I noticed that they actually did not even come from eBay at all.

So what have we learned? If something seems too good to be true, more than likely it is. Craigslist is doing their best to warn users about scams, but you need to use some common sense to protect yourself. I had a little fun researching for this post, and I hope that it helps someone protect their money. In the end, I have learned to never trust a geologist from Portugal.

As you probably didn’t know, my new wife (Skirt On The Sideline) and I recently traveled to New York City for our honeymoon. In preparation for our trip we made flight and hotel arrangements, and booked tickets for one broadway show. Our plan was to basically play it by ear while in the city and wander around to see what we could get into. The first day we arrived, I came up with the idea of trying to use only our Android powered smartphones as research and navagation while in NYC. A number of free applicaitons were used by both my wife and I to take us all around the city while we were there.

Google Maps with Navigation.

The first, and quite possiblally the most important application we used was Google Maps with Navagation. As part of the Android operating system, Google Maps was able to pin point our location regardless what part of the city we were located in. The best feature of the application was its abllitiy to use the turn by turn directions to instruct us how to get from place to place. The program lets you select your mode of transportation, either by foot, by car, by public transportation, or by bike. The public transportation option included NYC buses and subway trains with any necessary walking (to or from stations) and any necessary train transfers. Also, as you search for businesses, Google Maps will integrate reviews and feedback.

Basically we were able to use the GPS to locate our starting point, search google for our desired destination, and Google Maps would locate the cloesest train and tell use step by step how to get there. Each search was complete with three different options of travel, and aprox travel time. The only negative that I saw with this application was that it required data to update the maps. So once we were actually underground on the subway platfom, we were not able to update the map or route. However, we found a solution to that problem.

NYC Mate

NYC Mate was discovered in the Android market by my wife. It is an electronic copy of the NYC subway map complete with train schedules and maps of the vacinity around each station. The best part about this application is that all the map data is stored locally on your SD card. So if you are in a train, or on a platform, you are still able to view the map and check the schedules. The only downside was the fact that it does not utilize any GPS data, nor will it map out your route for you. But if used in conjunction with Google Maps the two applications compliment eachother very well. The best part about having NYC Mate was that we did not appear as obvious tourists when we wanted to check the rail map, it is much more descrete than a large fold out paper map.

Yelp

My wife and I only made one dinner reservation for the 5 days we were in NYC. Seeing as I have never been to the city and she had only been once before, we were somewhat lost when it came to eating meals. The easest way out would have been looking for fast food or other chain restaurants that we reconized from home. However, while in NYC we wanted to enjoy the many different food options that the city had to offer. Yelp was very helpful when trying to select a place to eat. Yelp, which is free in the Android market, is GPS enabled and alows you to locate resturants (and other service type businesses) near you and sort them by price and by user review. Yelp also integrates well with Google Maps, which made it very simple to search for a resturant and then map the route to get there. One feature that I also expermineted with was called “Monicle”. Monicle uses the phone’s camera and GPS data to let you visably search for locations in the area by holding your phone in the direction you want to travel. We used this feature to locate a Mexican resturant (which was closed for a private party) near Grand Central Station while standing on the street corner, and also a Chineese resturant (where we ultimately had lunch). Monicle is fun, but not quite as accurate as maping the location out with Google Maps. Your mileage may vary.

Urban Spoon

In addition to Yelp, we also used Urban Spoon to find ideas for meals in the various parts of town. Urban Spoon allows you to pick the location, style, and budget for your meal and with a quick shake of the phone it suggests a location. The listings weren’t as extensive as those provided by Yelp, but we were able to get some great suggestions for food using this application. Urban Spoon is also free in the Android Market.

I’ve been helping my fiancee, Ashley, set up her own blog for the NBA playoffs. Check her out over on Skirt on the Sideline. I also talked her into a twitter page, @skirtonsideline so you can follow her updates and comments.

So near the end of last year, I was in an accident in my 2004 SRT-4. I had purchased the car new when I was 19 and drove it all of its 78,218 mile life up until that point. The damage was enough that my insurance company decided to total it, and made me a generous offer. I was pretty upset about it, but I wasn’t hurt and cars can be replaced. Here are some of the last pictures of the car before the wreck.

I didn’t really go public with this right away, but now I’m ready to move on and get to work on my next project. I bought my wrecked SRT-4 back from the insurance company for $750 and began to disassemble it. I searched around for a replacement and found one for sale on SRTforums for $8300. Totally bone stock, 2004 EBlue Neon SRT-4 with a sunroof and vipers…sounds familiar, huh?

Now, this new car was for sale in West Virgina and I live in Las Vegas. I am originally from Ohio so I asked my Dad to drive and meet the seller, look over the car, and make the purchase. Once the deal was done, he took the car to the body shop where he works for some minor bumper repair to damage the previous owner told me about.

I then paid a transport company to deliver the car to me in Las Vegas. It cost about $650 bucks and took about a week.

And this is how “2NDTRY” was born…

I will continue to update my blog with my build progress. I’m transferring most everything over from my old car, in addition to some new goodies. Its going to be fun doing this knowing what I do now about the car.

I want to take a second to thank all my friends in The Las Vegas SRT Club that have helped me through this and turned wrenches late into the evening getting the old car ready for the scrap yard and will be turning future wrenches getting this car to a higher lever than my last.

So back in September I applied for a new program called the “SEMA Enthusiast Program”, which was looking for participants for a market research project at the 2009 SEMA Show. A few weeks later I got an email saying I had been selected. Tomorrow (11/4/09) I will be attending the show all day, for free. While I’m there, my task is to tweet about things I see and review them. The most active people will win prizes. It should be an interesting experience, and will be my second time attending the show. There is a link to my twitter feed at the top of my blog, follow me if you’d like to get my updates live from the show. I’ll be sure to comment about my experience tomorrow on here when its all over. Wish me luck!

So after last night’s meet, I decided to take surface streets home instead of the highway. To get to my neighborhood, I usually take Sahara to Rancho to Decatur.

I’m driving down Sahara, when I get to the light to turn on to Rancho. A cop pulls up behind the car next to me, and the light turns green. I slowly make my turn, so the exhaust doesn’t make too much noise, and he pulls behind me and hits the lights.

Great.

There’s a bus stop a few feet ahead of me so I head that direction, and as he’s pulling me over I roll down my windows and turn off my car. I hopes that he doesn’t hassle me for tint or for the exhaust. My headlights are still on. After a minute or so he comes up to my window. Its a younger cop, maybe a couple years older than me. He says he pulled me over because the light above my license plate was out. He then mentions that I could be sited for modifying the exhaust, but he probably won’t do that tonight. He asks for my info, so I start digging around in the glove box. Its been a while since I’ve been pulled over so I’m not sure where all my stuff is. As I’m digging he says “So, have you ever been arrested?” “Um…No”. I find all my docs and hand them over. As he goes back to his car, another Metro car flips a U-Turn and pulls up behind him with his lights on.

After a while the original cop comes back to the window and hands my docs back and tells me to have a good night. I ask him if I can check out the burnt out light, and he turns off his headlights to show me. Sure enough, its out, shame on me. So I tell them good night and I get back in the car. I flip the key to the on position as I buckle my seat belt, as I always do to prime the pump, and try to turn it over. “Click Click Click Click”. The damn PC680 died from having my headlights on while he was doing his thing. I wave and tell them the car is dead, and the first cop informs me that he can’t jump me from the cruiser. As I’m taking my phone out to try and get a hold of someone to give me a jump the other cop suggests we push start the car.

So here we are, at the corner of Sahara and Rancho, and two Metro cops are pushing my car up to a jogging pace. I pop the clutch as I try and turn it over and it fires up. At the next traffic light I give them both a thank you wave and they wave back.

Boost, Bytes, and Brews is now mobile enabled. The website and all its content has been optimized for mobile browsers. Visit it from your iPhone, BlackBerry, or other smart phone and check it out!

I’m very new at this, just wanted to test the site…

Real content is coming soon