After being a fan for many years - since their first album - I finally saw the Black Crowes last night at the Madison Theatre in Kentucky.  It's a smallish theatre and only holds maybe a few hundred people.  I was very surprised that they were playing there since they usually play much larger places.

The show was general admission and normally - given that I'm 6' 3" - I tend to hang back as I try not to block people behind me.  Not this show. I was about 5 or 6 rows back the whole time. About 20 feet from Chris Robinson and 25 from Rich.  I hate being packed into crowds, but it didn't matter.

The show... best show I've ever seen. They started out playing 3 or 4 songs acoustically (Rich and Chris) and then after a few numbers the whole band kicked in.  They played for a little over 2 hours and did a great variety of material from their second album to their current one, with a few covers thrown in.  There were some great jams as well.  The jam they did at the end of Wiser Time made the hair on my arms stand up. 

I was really stoked that they played Thorn in My Pride, Remedy, Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution and so many other great songs.  I'm really excited to get the recording.  The Crowes tape every show and put them up for sale on Crowesbase.com.

One of the reasons that I'm so enamored with them is that they're a band that really plays. They interact with each other musically and really seem to enjoy it.  When another band member would take a solo, the other band members would pay close attention and play off of them. They're just a great group.

I'm definitely not going to miss them again.  I know that I probably won't ever be that close to the stage again or that I'll see a night like that again, but I'm definitely looking forward to seeing them again.

Since I'm probably the last programmer on the web to write this post, I figured I'd finally get around to doing it.

How old were you when you started programming?

I dabbled a little bit when I was 10 or 11. My dad - a mechanical engineer - bought an IBM PC Jr. He knew a little C and Basic and I picked up on a few things. I also had some "Choose Your Own Adventure" type books where you had to write little Basic programs in order to progress in the book. For the life of me, I can't remember what they were called though. From there, I remember creating a program called "Froo" (presciently close to foo?) which was a series of ASCII art screens that told a story about an alien.

How did you get started in programming?

I started doing some HTML in college, making a website for my band, Red Earth. It was early enough that the first year I did it, I was viewing the site through a text-based browser. By the time I had graduated college with a secondary education degree, I had decided that it wasn't for me. I got a temp job doing data entry, which led to me a job doing release management. In that context, I was assisting someone who asked if I wanted to try some programming. I took to it pretty well.

What was your first language?

Basic when I was a kid, then a little VBScript/ASP when I started as a job. Perl was really where I cut my teeth though and was my first love.

What was the first real program you wrote?

Some sort of ASP website to display information entered from a VB 6 application.

What languages have you used since you started programming?

Basic, VBScript, Perl, Java, JavaScript, Bash, C#, VB.NET, Ruby, PowerShell

What was your first professional programming gig?

I'd consider my first professional development gig to be when I got a few months into release management, when I started to do a lot of Perl development.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?

Yes. The major thing I would do different is that I would have gone to school for computer science. I've always felt that I've missed out by not getting formal training. There's no substitute for wanting to learn and taking it upon yourself to discover new ideas, but I would definitely have changed my major if I knew now what I know then.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?

Don't ever stop learning and trying to improve. This field moves so fast that you need to be aware of what's being discussed and what new ideas are being introduced. You don't want to be a magpie developer, but it's important to try out new things.

What’s the most fun you’ve ever had … programming?

Any time that I can implement a new idea successfully and the HTML renders correctly or the test goes green, I get a kick out of it. I still get a little bit of a thrill when stuff works. It's still a little bit magic to me.

I'd also say that working with Leon was always great. It was easy to get better at programming when I was sitting across the aisle from somebody who has as much passion about development as I do and wanted to learn just as much.

It's been a great weekend, but a really long one. My agenda:

• Thursday - Work, Band Practice
• Friday - Barbecue at a friends, went to Citifolk for a couple of hours, went out to dinner, went to a Friend's party, closed out the bar watching The Big Wazu at the Oregon Express.
• Saturday - Made 2 dishes, went to my brother's birthday party and then went and played with Red Earth at McGuffy's.
• Sunday - Mowed the lawn, painted some of the front of the house, went out with friends for catering planning, then came home to hang out with Tracy.

I'm worn out but pretty happy with the way I spent my time. I had a great variety of activities and really enjoyed hanging out with a lot of different people.

The show last night at McGuffy's went really well. The only bad thing that happened was that I broke a string halfway through the set. It really kind of threw me off. My Samick - an old Tele copy - wasn't cooperating and shorted out. I borrowed Bobby's Fender Strat for the last part of the show, but it always sucks when you've got gear failure. It's just one of those things where you have a familiarity. When's that's removed, it takes you out of your comfort zone. I know my guitar. I've been playing it for about 10 years now. When you've got a different guitar, it's like driving somebody else's car. You know how to operate it, but it's a little uncomfortable.

Overall though, it was pretty good show. There was a decent size crowd who were into at and everyone seemed to have fun.

So... at the start of this weekend, I was not an amateur caterer. After this weekend, I am. I've got a couple of friends getting married soon and they were having problems with their caterer (some shady things happened...). So at a party on Friday, while hanging out with the groom I made a comment about me doing the food. I thought about it and realize that if I could get my friends Josh and Chris in on it, it could actually be feasible.

So, I made a couple of phone calls the next day, and everyone was in. So, I get to barbecue for a few hundred people. We've largely worked out the details and I feel suprisingly good about it. It's going to be a big challenge, but it's going to be great. It's definitely going to be the most people I've ever cooked for, but it's going to work. I'm happy that I'm going to be able to help out with my friends wedding, but also to do something that I really enjoy on a larger scale.