Sword's Tavern

Yeah, I’m a fan, but I can still separate good music from bad (not a question of like or not, though like I do ;]).  The new album from Zakk Wylde and his Black Label Society came out a week ago and I am still listening to it, examining each track, absorbing it and taking it in.  This album is amazing, I mean I can’t tell you how many times I have gotten a CD where there was one or two good tracks and the rest was pretty much filler (never with a ZW or BLS cd of course), but every damn track on The Order Of The Black is awesome.  From hard hitting metal madness to rock and roll badness to powerful ballads that make you want to weep and call your mama just to tell her you love her.  This album is a masterpiece of music, a wide range of music styles, a superb example of Zakk and Co’s abilities and of course, Zakk’s writing ability.  You need to go get this album and give it a spin.  I can guarantee you this, if you aren’t a Black Label fan now, you will be after listening to this record.

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Maybe it’s me, and please feel free to drop a comment and let me know what you think.  In fact, I am asking you to comment or hit the feedback button/contact form and let me know your thoughts.  I have working with what seems like a bazillion different operating systems over the years, to varying degrees of proficiency and intimacy.  I don’t just mean various versions of Windows either, I have worked with BeOS, DOS, Linux, MacOS, MenuetOS, NetWare, OS/2, SkyOS, UNIX, and Windows to name a reasonable sampling.  That list then breaks down into further releases, variations, versions and more.  The point I am trying to make here is that aside from the fact that I enjoy tinkering with operating systems, I have a pretty wide field of experience with many, many different ways to boot a computer.

The one big thing that I notice as a glaring difference between practically all of the operating systems I have tried and Windows is multitasking.  I mean true, let us do more than one thing at a time multitasking.  Not just do a little here and do a little there, the “hand off a lot, back and forth, and it’s real slow but we’re gonna call it multitasking while we entertain you with pretty pictures” kind of stuff.

My two primary operating systems these days are Windows and Linux, Windows 7 and Debian to be more precise.  Depending on where I am and what I am working on those can vary, but here at home, I tend to stick to those two as much as I can.  I have gone all Linux before and I loved it, and to be honest I’d love to do it again, but there are games I want to play and some development and music recording/production software that I can only run on Windows that I just don’t want to give up.  Therefore I run both.

Now, on to the crux of this long winded diatribe.  It seems like I can run many applications, daemons, processes and whatnot on my Linux boxen and it is happy to do so all day long.  In fact, I can overload it to the extreme and it will still function, albeit quite slowly.  No crash, no fuss, no muss, and once I stop some surplus processes it will come back and to a more or less normal state.  Except maybe if I am running Oracle, there seems to be no way to recover from running Oracle.

Compare this though, to my Windows box, where I can literally bring it to it’s knees with two … maybe three processes.  And I don’t just mean performance knees either, I mean the box will sometimes lock up, or even if not it never quite recovers (I suspect memory leaks maybe).  This gets especially if not exponentially worse if these two or three processes are attempting to access files on the same disk or partition.  It’s like Windows cannot stand the thought of sharing disk I/O with anyone, even itself.

Now, all that being said, let me make another note, this is not another Windows bashing article that are aplenty all around the ‘net these days.  These are my observations and frustrations that make me shake my head and wonder why slick marketing and strong arm business techniques always supersede quality and performance when it comes to sales (Beta versus VHS comes to mind).

What do you think?  Am I crazy?  Getting senile in my middle age? Or have any of you out there noticed similar things?

• It takes 7 seconds for food to pass from mouth to stomach.
• A human hair can hold 3kg.
• The length of the penis is three times the length of the thumb.
• The femur is as hard as concrete.
• A woman’s heart beats faster than a man’s.
• Women blink twice as much as men.
• We use 300 muscles just to keep our balance when we stand.
• The woman has read this entire text. The man is still looking at his thumb.

Look out!  The NAACP is going after those evil racist folk at Hallmark because they have an inspirational card for Graduates that talks about there being no limits on your future and that you can do anything you want.  The card is one of those electronic audio cards that plays a funny greeting or tune when you open it.  In this case, it’s a couple of cartoon characters talking about the uplifting message of nothing stopping you from achieving your dreams.  They go so far as to say that you could even take over the solar system.  I don’t think they meant that literally, they are just trying to make a point and inspire.

There is one phrase though, where the cartoon characters say “You black holes, you’re so ominous! [Other character laughs and says 'Ooooo!'] And you planets? Watch your backs.”  Kinda silly, right?  Yeah, but hardly racist though.  Now, I have listened to the audio from the card, and though it’s noisy and cartoony sounding, it sounds just like it is supposed to.  However, the NAACP has now come out and blasted Hallmark over this card (that has been out for over three years by the way) saying that what it really says is “whores” instead of “holes” and that it’s telling black people to “watch your backs”.  The president of the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP specifically stated that it sounds like “a group of children, laughing and joking about blackness … again”.  She says this with a straight face, and a very serious looking black woman behind her nodding her head with her eyes closed.  She then goes on to say that the card is “intentionally demeaning African-American women, by first calling them prostitutes and then threatening them”.  Threatening them?  Calling them prostitutes??  What planet is she from???

Folks, this is stupid and insane.  There is nothing on the card that even remotely resembles a black person, they are cartoon characters.  It even says stuff about graduates and the solar system all over the card.  How in the hell do these morons get to come out and claim racism?  Plus, if it’s so freakin’ evil, why didn’t they do something before now?  Where have they been for the last three years???  These moonbats ought to be locked up and thrown in jail for reading something into nothing and wasting everyone’s time.  It’s stupid crap like this that makes real racism claims that much harder prove and justify when they happen.

Thanks Consumerist for letting me know about this atrocity …

We just posted about the release of the first single Parade of the Dead off of Black Label’s new album Order of the Black. Guess what? Single number two Crazy Horse came out last night (after midnight ;]) on iTunes. Let me tell you, this one might be heavier, harder and better than the first. Really though, it doesn’t matter, they are both SLAMMIN’ so go get them now!!!

Head’s up everyone, Zakk Wylde and his band family Black Label Society have been hard at work in the Black Label Bunker, the recording studio that Zakk built outside his home.  They have spent the last few months working on a new album and all signs are pointing to this being some of their best work yet.  The first single, Parade of the Dead, to be released from the album, Order of the Black, is now available on iTunes.  I highly recommend picking it up.  If you are a Zakk/BLS fan then it goes without saying that you need this, the song is slammin’ and rocks the house all the way down.  Even if you aren’t already a Zakk/BLS fan, if you are a metal head like me, get the song!  You’ll love it and walk away a Zakk/BLS fan.  If you aren’t a metal head, get it anyway because it will convert you!  Take a listen to Zakk, Nick, JD, and Will tear it up in true Black Label fashion.

Zakk Wylde’s Website

Black Label Society

BLS Nation