Well folks, I made it through the day. The Rolling Stones concert was last night and let me tell you, what a time it was. Man, we enjoyed it immensely. I figured for those of you who did not go, I?d give you the run down of how everything went yesterday.
Let?s start with getting on our way. We left the house close to 1pm and then had some food and made our way to moms. We dropped the car off, and waited for the bus. Ran into someone from Norampac that I used to work with at the bus stop which was kind of cool. The bus took us to the Northwest Center where there was a LOT of people waiting. When I say a lot, I mean a LOT! There was a huge lineup but despite people?s bickering, the line moved rather quickly. I think we were there for about an hour or so. I don?t really remember exactly how long we stood there but once we got on the bus, down to Magnetic Hill we went.
When we got there, we had to walk up towards the concert which was only about a 20 minute walk. We got to the gates, and were barely searched, and off we went to go exploring. There was a LOT of people already there and by the time we sat our asses down, Our Lady Peace started their set. This was good because I was not interested in seeing the first band. I think at this point, it was somewhere around 4pm.
We set up just to the right of tower 9 and beside one of the giant screens which was showing the concert. You can?t begin to imagine the amount of people, and the tents, the stage, everything. Just massive.
There was a lot of pot smoking which was expected but still annoying. Regardless, we sat down, and made our space for what would be most of the night. On occasion, Tamara would go for a walk, or I would go for a walk. We took a pile of pictures as disposable cameras were permitted and even being sold at the show. I hope to have those developed soon.
By the time the Tragically Hip were done, we decided to roam around a bit and made our way closer to the stage (although nowhere really near it) and found a good spot to remain for the rest of the show. At this point, we were both tired, but curious as to how the rest of the night would go.
Stones came on around 8:30 and played a wicked set. Awesome light show, a stage portion that came out into the audience, and with the binoculars, you could see very clearly. Even without them, it wasn?t bad. They played til 11pm and had some cool fireworks go off to finish the show. The ended with an encore where they did Can?t Get No Satisfaction which was very well done.
Getting home was the hard part. Show was done at 11, we got home at 2:20am. Waited a LONG time for a bus but eventually we did make it home where I crashed in the tub for about 30 minutes, and went to bed shortly thereafter.
Few things to note. I am sick. I think the concert smoke, and setting made my current cold way worse although it has now moved from my throat into my sinuses so here?s to hoping that it moves out completely by Tuesday. Also, my biggest complaint was the fact that despite the huge amount of sound and video crews, they were not able to fix a simple audio problem until later in the Stones set. Anyone who was there would have noticed this if they watched the giant screens. The video was out of sync with the audio by about a half a second or so. So when someone was singing, their mouth was moving, but no actual audio. After digging a bit, it actually was the audio that was lagged. When you looked at the drums through the binoculars, you would see the drummer hit a cymbal, and then a short second later, hear it. The video was live but the audio was delayed by a half second. Annoying but tolerable.
Other honourable mentions. $7 for a slice of pizza of $56 for a whole 15?. Nice price guys! Glad I wasn?t buying it. $40 for a t-shirt. No thanks, I will use my ticket stub as my souvenir.
All in all, a very good show, with no incidents. People were annoyed by the slowness of the buses, myself included, but with so many people, it wasn?t that bad. I am very happy to have been a part of it and I now think I can look forward to more large festival shows like this in our area. We did the Stones good. Hooray!
So now, on to some other news. I received an email today regarding the sites that I host. This one, and Tormented?s. Apparently, someone has taken a liking to the sites and been exploiting a flaw in one of the pieces of software I have. This of course has resulted in some, shall we say, issues. Because of the issues, I have removed the offending software temporarily. This is the reason why the photos are offline right now. I will need to move them to a different piece of software in order to keep things sane. Apparently, someone tried to use my sites to run IRC bots. I know a few IRC?ers so I am curious about it. Regardless, the data is available to be examined so it should be interesting to see where these bots were trying to sit.
So, in the meantime, the photos are offline, and I am working with my provider to find a better means of hosting my photos, and keeping my sites active. Awful curious if this exploiter is someone I know.
With that, I?m done for the day folks. We have a big family thing going on tomorrow and I know that I need to get some more rest. I have barely eaten anything today but despite being sick, and my nose being red, I actually do feel a bit better. Since it is now 8pm, I am going to assume that Tamara will be home shortly with goodies from her 5 hours of shopping.
