Willo O'Brien

I actually have quite a bit to catch up on here – including photos to upload, which will have to come later – but here’s a Reader Digest wrap-up:

Thursday night I went out & saw Gris Gris @ 12 Galaxies w/ Lyne, her cousin Brookes (?), Jim and Chris – and even ran into Scott’s roomate, Heidi! Gris Gris was awesome live & I’m stoked to get their stuff & see them again! Everyone else in our crew had taken off by then, but Chris & I had a *great* time! :)

Friday day I luckily had no deadlines or work hangin over my head (so rare! woohoo!) and helped Lucia move into her fabulous new place. Congrats Lucia! Then Friday afternoon I came home, showered & headed out with Hez & Misty to some fancy hotel on the Embarcadero where Ben Lee was playing a free show. (see hez’s post with photos here – including that dorky fay photo of me – and misty’s post with photos here – mine are coming soon!).

After hugging and rubbin elbows with cutie Ben, and enjoying a tasty, expensive mojito with the girls I raced home, changed & met Sarah Hatter & friends at Chow for her birthday dinner! Chow is so yumm! Afterwards, I dragged them all out to the Argus, since my friend Jim was spinning there – and Scott & Heidi were there, too! (Sarah’s camera phone pic of us) Oh & I met this cool Aussie girl, George, who’s new to town & works at Flickr!

The rest of the weekend I shopped till I dropped, which was SO nice & relaxing. Plus, yay for new clothes! Which finally brings me to Sunday night:

Hijack the Disco, Midnight Serenade & Diamond Nights @ Cafe du Nord

I picked up Hez & met Lucia, Chris & Jeff (Chris’ friend who’s visiting from Ohio) at Lucky 13 for a pre-drink. Lyne was supposed to show, but got there late & joined us at du Nord for a bit with her sister, brother & cousin.

Sadly, I had brought my camera (of course!), but realized when I went to take it out to snap some of the Hijack boys playing, I forgot to load the fully charged battery back into it! arg!! Luckily, my girls are on it! Here’s Hez’s photos and her post about the night – and here’s Misty’s post, and she took this awesome shot below. Thanks girls – you documented the evening well! :) Ted will probably have his posted some time today, too.

Here’s Kelly, me, Trevor (Hijack’s KICK ASS drummer) and the beautiful Hezcatt

And Hez & I with cutie Mike (Hijack’s bass/vox) who we’ve all declared needs to become small
enough to fit in our pockets so we can take him wherever we go!

Hez, Lucia & I, makin trouble:

Chris, me, Jeff & Lucia:

Don’t forget to look at the rest of Hez’s photos – there’s some good ones!

Show review? OK, so Hijack the Disco were GREAT, as always! They put on an awesome show, and I’m in love with all of them! I loved hearing some of their new songs, too. Gawd, they are SO good!!! I’m so proud! :) *beaming*

I was chatting w/ friends in the bar for most of Midnight Serenade‘s set… but the one song I did go in for sounded fun – very new wave/80’s-ish… worth checking out again!

Diamond Nights were AWESOME!!! Post-show discussions included heavy debates on similarities to Rick Springfield, Thin Lizzie & Billy Idol – which is fitting considering that’s what’s listed on allmusic! Lead singer, Morgan, had the hott lip curl action happening and they put on a great show that left us all with big smiles on our faces!! And the guys from the band were super cool… which is always a plus!

We all hung out afterwards, considering the DJ was none other than our kick ass friend Bagel Ted, and had more drinks until we closed the bar. Aaand we even had a little after party at my place – which is the best!! I love after parties!! :)

wow, after 7 long months, I’m finally ready to date again. phew!!! It feels good and already I’m having a great time ;) but you probably wouldn’t have expected anything less, right?

aawww yaaaa… let the making out begin!!! :)

Speaking of making out – how frickin CRAZY is this (Kat, this is for you!!): Remember that crazy Friday night in NYC? Well, lots of the true debaucheries get left out on my PG-13 blog… but I will tell you all now, that night was a total make-out-fest. I don’t know if somethin was in the water or what – but everyone was kissin everyone and it was a night Kat & I won’t soon forget!! Read: SO FUN. :)

So, crazily enough one random boy I met that night ended up coming through town last week & we went out for drinks… which is wild, considering after such a short meeting in a random bar on a long trip that (like several others I met) we could have never spoken again – but instead apparently I gave him my card, and since then we’ve become “internet friends” and we have a ton in common about music, etc! So that was cool to see him again (admittedly a tad more sober than the first time :) but GET THIS!!! Sunday night – which was so fun & I’ll fill you in on the next post – I see this guy at Cafe du Nord that looks a lot like another guy I’d met that same night in that same bar, and was like – whoa!? what are the odds?

SO I hemmed & hawed about it but I kept thinking I just have to ask – and finally I did. I walked up to him & said, “this is going to be a random question – but were you in New York about a month or so ago?” And he said, yes, that he lived there! ah ha!! So then I procede to remind him who I am – that he might recall I think he kissed me & my friend Kat (hahhahaa – oy, yes, there’s a peak into my party life for you all!). So turns out “Eric” (photo of him & Kat at the Orchard Bar) was in town visiting family because he’s actually originally from here – and that he was only there because his family knows the Diamond Nights family who were all there seeing their boy rock out (which he totally did, post to come)… so how random is that!?!? Eric gave me his number and I blabbed about inviting him to a BBQ yesterday, but then never called cuz I was a tad hungover ;) – but he also revelled in re-meeting someone he randomly kissed over a month ago and decided to give me a kiss for “old times sake”. hahaa The best part was when I told Morgan, the lead singer, he laughed because apparently Eric’s girlfriend was there, too. HAHHAA! oh man… too funny.

My Sunday night was SO FUN! I’ll post about that in a bit… man, I’m getting no work done today!

When I first got my Powerbook, I started looking for a way to go from Yahoo! Calendar to iCal and there was just no quick & easy solution at all! As iCalendar (.ics) users know, there’s a big push for calendars to start streamlining their data fields for easier synching… and this is totally the problem going from yahoo to ical.

Last week Ted & I were IMing about his trying to get his Yahoo! address book into Apple’s Address Book – and we took care of that*, but since I’d already searched endlessly for a solution on moving over the Calendar, I pretty much gave him a “sorry, buddy – it’s just not possible” type of answer.

*If you have access to Outlook, I think that would also be a possible solution here for moving the Calendar & the Address book, because I think it’ll import .txt or .csv & export to .ics or vcal – but anyway, the common mac user won’t have access to that – so I had to find a different solution.

Long story short, I got a wild hair to find a solution for Ted, because I was SURE it was possible somehow… and so this is what is documented below.

Keep in mind, this isn’t a perfect solution. I found once it was all said & done, iCal has a few blank entries (one of the days in my calendar is full of crazy blanks, which I’d imagine is because I had events with a bunch of notes with commas or something) & for some reason there are a few various events that happened last year that are showing up this year (but seems to be specifically vacation type events where they lasted 4 days & stuff – odd) – alas – if you’re desperate, it’s a great start!!

• Save out your Yahoo Calendar as a .csv (which is under Options, Export – Export to Outlook)
   
• Then, open the .csv using Excel (if you don’t have it, ask someone with a PC to do it for you – it doesn’t take but a second) and change the column names from:
  Subject,Start Date,Start Time,End Date,End Time,All day event,Description – to:
  Title,Date (Start),Start Time,End Date,End Time,Category 1,Category 2,Private
  (come to think of it, this is probably where the All Day Event thing gets wonky & why they’re now showing up a year later – stupid Yahoo Calendar not following a good format!)
   
• Then save it out as a .txt file
   
• Download/Install Palm Desktop, which is free! I know it sucks to have to install something – but I had to find a calendar program that would import cvs or txt & then export to an .ics or vcal file.
   
• Once installed – open up Palm Desktop & the datebook should already be open… if not, hit Date Book.
   
• File / Import your .txt file
  It will then prompt you to "Specify Field Order for Input"
  Choose Fields: Date Book
  Delimiters: Tab & Return
  Then you’ll see all your dates in there – but keep going….
   
• Hit File / Export
  Module: Date Book
  Items: All Datebook Items
  Format: vCal
    
• Open iCal and import the vCal file!! phew!!!
   

Again – it’s just a bummer that some of the events are somehow marked to repeat every year – I’m sure with more fiddling around I could figure out how to search & replace that or something…. but I already spent so many hours on this! haha.

It’s neat to see my iCal all full of dates – but personally I’m still set on using Yahoo. :)

sunday: work work work – I am finally caught up!! wooohooooo!!!!

monday: work(out) + work work work + drinks w/ Harry (from nyc’s friday night madness)

tuesday: work(out) + work work work + dinner at Limón w/ Jenny! It was SOOOOO YUMM!! Their ceviche is outstanding… and the sangria is so delicious! Besides the wait, it was a fun place with great service. I recommend it! (and thanks to Jee for recommending it to me!) Jenny & I have needed a good one-on-one night for a long time and we finally made it happen! yay! She is so fun & so cute – we had a BLAST!! Thanks for a great night, DJ ShOOey!! (and the yuuummy bday dinner + Sauza! aww yaa! :) xoxoxoxoxo (here’s her post about the evening)

wed: client meeting downtown + lunch w/ lyne & kristin! + work + BAM + drinks & crafts @ Jem & Tania’s!

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OMG I totally want to see this movie: Me and You and Everyone We Know

a teeny bit o water spilt and my (external mac) keyboard is no longer working. arg. any of you have an extra USB mac keyboard by chance? crap

UPDATE: It’s working again!! I guess it just needed to air out – phew!!!! :)

p.s. something that’s not crap – this site: elsewares.com – great stuff!

Ok, so since I barely get my arse to the movies anymore, I need to make some decisions on a few these next few weeks before they leave the theatre. So, if you’ve seen these, please tell me what you think –

Catch it on the Big Screen or OK for rental?
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (at the Parkway, which is worth going to in itself!)
Batman Begins
Crash

I can’t wait to see:
Howl’s Moving Castle
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Wedding Crashers (probably could wait till video, but it looks hilarious, so I’d do theatre for it)

And, if you’re a Star Wars fan – you might want to skip this next sentence, so you don’t have a heart attack: I think I might not go see it at all! I’ve felt more obligated to than anything – but I really have no desire. I know… crazy! :)

Man, I’m so out of it – I don’t recognize 80% of the movies out. I guess cuz I don’t go to many movies or watch TV (or when I do, I FF through the commercials, thanks to TiVo)… so let me know if I’m missing anything great. The last 2 movies I saw where Madagascar & The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. (Hi, I’m 13)

Steve just posted a thing asking people about their most played song in iTunes – and my results dumbfounded me… I would have thought that I played songs way more than it’s reporting! But maybe it’s because I had to reimport everything at some point last year because of an iTunes crash or something. Anyway – instead of listing out the very top one – here’s my top 20. :)

Song	Artist	Play Count
Bagel Radio	(streaming radio)	84
Woxy.com	(streaming radio)	50
Say Something New	The Concretes	21
Crown Of Love	The Arcade Fire	20
Come Over	Cathy Davey	19
Save Button	Cathy Davey	18
Seems Fine	The Concretes	16
On The Table	A.C. Newman	15
She’s The Real Thing	The Casual Dots	15
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)	The Arcade Fire	13
Robot	The Futureheads	13
Swingset Chain	Loquat	13
Fairlee	Matt Pond PA	13
Heavy Lifting	Ambulance Ltd	12
Reasons for Silence	The Delgados	12
The Good that Won’t Come Out	Rilo Kiley	12
Come Crash	A.C. Newman	11
Venus	Air	11
Anything Anthology	The Butchies	11
My Surprise	Cathy Davey	11

You can also always check out my audioscrobbler stats, which I think actually do a much better job at documenting what I listen to the most. It’s pretty fun to see, actually.

What are your top songs? Do you use audioscrobbler?

Holy Moly. My good friend Justyn is getting married. Jeezus. Everyone is getting married & having babies! But Justyn, man, he was my party buddy! He hadn’t had a long term relationship in YEARS! And now look! So wild!

We ran into eachother randomly on Caltrain, after almost 10 years (we know eachother from high school!) and ended up becoming best of friends. We had so many good times together! But a few years ago he moved, and now he’s shacked up in Nashville, a home owner & about to be married! My gawd. Totally goes to show you that you think it might not happen, and then all of a sudden it’s just *happening*. Pretty wild. But I’m really, really excited for him & Stephanie. Plus, it’s a great excuse for me to finally get my ass out to Nashville to see them, their house & have us all catch up (aka party it up like old times)!

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I’ve been seeing a trend lately, that I think is a good sign. People are hookin up! And I’m not just talking marriage and babies and all that serious adult stuff… I mean there are times when people are breakin up & there are times when people are hookin up – and right now I’m seeing some good upswing on the hookin up side!

Granted I can’t claim that I am one of them (I’m not sure I’m 100% looking for that just yet, anyway so it’s no wonder), but all I have to say is it’s a good thing to see. Summer love is in the air! yay!

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I was invited to a ball game tonite, but sadly had to cancel. I knew I couldn’t just hop off all willy nilly to a game – I just have too many deadlines I need to tend to. I might even be meeting a potential client who is flying through town tonite, at like 11pm. Crazy!

But it’s not all work. People think I work *too* hard, but that’s what happens when you have your own business. And I’m not complaining, because although it can sometimes run me ragged trying to squeeze in my 3 lives into 1, I definitely play and make time for fun.

Tomorrow night I’ll be going to a show, Saturday night there’s a BBQ/b-day bar crawl and then Sunday another BBQ. But every single hour around that is work. Oh & working out!

I’ve done SUCH a kick ass job at making working out a priority. It feels good & already I’m noticing a difference. I wish I would have reminded myself that I had actually lost about 2 sizes in 2004 (working out + being blissfully in love = willo miraculously gets skinny), so that I could have been remembering to keep it off. But hey, the last 6 months have been pretty intense, so I suppose really everything just had to happen that way for one reason or another and now it’s about pulling it back together. I’m already feeling MUCH better, I’m happy to say. Life is such a work in progress, huh?

Ya, so anyway – I’m a workout machine. And like a big dork, I put together a little mini calendar to pat myself on the back:

This is actually really cool to see… because I thought I was averaging about 6 days a week… but it looks more like 4-5. Good to know! (I guess it just feels like 6 hahaa). So ya, I made it my mission to get back in the habit and I sure have! yay for me! I’m already feeling the difference, and seeing it a little… but it takes time. It’s certainly a lot harder getting into shape than it is getting out!