Last night, Mark, Kim, Laura and I went to see Bon Jovi at the San Jose Arean. My first concert in 1986 was Bon Jovi and Cinderella at the Shoreline Amphitheater.  Mark took me.  We saw them again in 1989 on the New Jersey tour.  I hadn’t seen them since so I thought it would be good to take them last night.  This would be Laura’s first arena concert.

The show went well.  It was a polished, slick show last night, though no pyrotechnics.  Jon Bon Jovi did great crowd interaction going into the crowd on numerous occasions which is difficult to do in an arena.  But, what I don’t understand is why they had to play most of their material from the last two albums (the last five years ot so)?  It is horrible. Maybe 45 minutes of the 2 hour 15 minute show was pre-1990 and the rest was the new stuff.  Even some of the old stuff was toned down.  Very disappointed in that.  Yes, many people knew the newer songs but everyone got into it when they would play the songs off the Slippery When Wet and New Jersey albums. These albums are what made them popular.
A lot of bands who didn’t have a career in the 90’s are making a come back.  But, some bands think it’s cool to play new songs. That’s crap.  I saw Motley Crue last year and they played all old stuff except for a few songs, which were horrible.  Of course they are going to fall in the same trap as Bon Jovi and record a new album.  It’s not worth it.  These bands need to look at people like James Taylor and Neil Diamond who stick to the past hits and the crowds keep coming back.

I finally got a couple sets of images in the photo section.  I was dragging feet because I was dreading the time it would take to format the pictures.  Then I was going to purchase a program that would do it for me but that was a bit expensive.  So I looked around Photoshop and saw that I could do all the formatting and html with Photoshop.  I just need to tweak it a bit to fit the website format and presto.  Hope you enjoy.

I found a new beer that has a wonderful smooth taste and not to bitter.  It’s Stockyard Oatmeal Stout.  Pick up a six-pack at your store.

Check out Gor Mkhitarian. He is an Armenian folk guitarist. He sings in Armenian but it’s a bit less harsh sounding. Good melodies. We checked him out a couple weeks in SF at an art gallery. I double dog dare ya to try it out. Happy listening!

If you haven’t had the chance to attend the Banff Film Festival, you are missing out. We went to a showing last night in Sunnyvale and saw some great films. The films focus on environmental issues, outdoor/mountain sports, and culture awareness. We have had the opportunity to attend the festival a number of times over the years and each time has been wonderful. The original festival is held in Banff, Canada in November and then the films go on tour. You can visit the website for the festival to see when it will come to your town.

We saw 8 films over 3 hours last night. The topics were about paragliding over the Grand Canyon, Fishing and protecting the Black Canyon in Colorado, crack climbing in Utah (great film), children skiing in Nepal, kayaking in Sequoia National Park, insane mountian biking, ice climbing in Canada, and wonderful visual display of balancing (great camer and editing work).

Each stop offers different films, so if you have the time then check it out.

After spending the last two days customizing my theme from WordPress, I finally converted the News section into a blog. You can now add your own comments (after my approval) to what we post on this section.

You will also notice that on some of the pages I have added scrolling pictures. Thanks to Eric Harshbarger for this java program he wrote years ago and to Mark for getting it to me.

The About pages have been updated with photos and text in some.

Work, work work…lots of work on the website. I have added many new pictures throughout the pages. You’ll notice the new graphic for the main navigation links is looking sharp. Ouch! Many big thanks to Jason Sprague for helping me with CSS and the php email form we now have in our contact section. Take a look and send us a message. Jason may be in Armenia but he is only an IM away. Keep an eye out for the News section to turn into a blog area where your feedback will be welcomed.

If you truly want to have the full experience of this website, you should download the recommended font Gigi. If the font for the links don’t look the same as on the font on the first (those are graphics), then you don’t have the Gigi font. Also, if you are still in the dark ages and are not using the Mozilla Firefox web browser, then download it and start having a truly enjoyable browsing experience.

This weekend we are taking a much needed break from the San Jose area and heading to the north bay area. We are looking forward to the Sonoma/Napa/Mendocino areas for a few days. We’ll post photos at a later date of the visit.

We saw the movie Elizabethtown this evening. We don’t think it’s as bad as the critics have said. We enjoy Cameron Crowe movies and liked watching it.

We are redisigned, new and improved for your viewing pleasure. Lots of changes to the website, actually you may not notice any similiarties to the old one. We thought we needed a major overhaul and, after many hours with Dreamweaver and HTML tutorials, we are happy to present to you the website.

Take your time and browse through the site. If you find any problems then please contact the webmaster so he/she/it can keep the site updated and working. This is a construction zone, but over the next few weeks we’ll get a good foundation for you to browse.

Thanks for visiting!