The noises came and the noises went with promises that were heaven sent.

[reddragdiva]

Friday, arkady and I went to the nice show at On The Rocks for Voices Of Masada. Who were on first, rather than last, as their CD was not in fact ready. They were really good, although I did spend the entire set thinking how they'd have sounded ten times better with a real drummer instead of a drum machine. Drum machines are the curse of goth rock. The Sisters have a lot to fucking answer for.

The second band, Quidam, got half the audience to leave. Sucked tits. What a racket! Hid at the bar. I would say that literally all of their songs sounded like "The Lord's Prayer" by Siouxsie with Sid Vicious on drum machine, but that would sound interesting. They try and — the important point — fail to achieve a truly bracing atonality. Someone made the fatal mistake of telling the shrieker at an early age that she could sing. I think using a noose for a stage prop was entirely too tempting for the likes of us, which is why we killed her.

Bats In The Belfry were much better and got my foot tapping from the first notes. They too have a drum machine, but apart from that were much nicer. And the singer looks like a Teutonic Marc Almond. We left after from gig fatigue. Oh well.

The rest of the weekend was where patient fatigue meets carer fatigue. Not helped by the weather and the noisy downstairs neighbours. But a lot better from yesterday evening on.

That and getting the work laptop and VPN to somewhat behave. What I think was the eventual solution was to tell the NAT to send any packets it didn't know what to do with to the laptop. Now the VPN stays up between 12 and 55 minutes. Further tweaking will ensue.

Oh dear, I'm on call. I just did my first bit of work: restarting a broken Java app.

My weight is also creeping towards three figures. I shall be walking the fire escape on a regular basis.