In 2024 on average I had been fueling up my car well under $4/gallon. In contrast to that, sometimes in late January 2025 I noticed I started paying over $4/gallon of gasoline.
Just a rant.
Gasoline Over Four Dollars per Gallon.
Mac mini, for work.
I requisitioned a Mac mini for a particular task at the office. I went back and forth on what computer to get. This would be the first desktop Mac at this office.
Monolith, Light, and Shadow.
Having a bit of an adventure with cameras. There were a lot of subjects to capture and at the end of the day I chose a photo of a rock.
A Symbol of Resistance
Somehow food item can be a symbol of resistance. Resistance to stupid and dangerous ideas.
Speaking of food, a dozen of eggs right now costs more than double than 6 months ago.
Parasomnia (Instrumental)
One official day listening to Dream Theater album number 16: “Parasomnia”.
“Parasomnia” Deluxe Edition comes with CD of the album, CD contains instrumental version of the album, and Blu-ray contains Dolby Atmos & 5.1 Surround Sound, High-Resolution Stereo Mixes, animated visualizers for each song.
The best part of “Parasomnia” Deluxe Edition is the Instrumental version of the CD. I’ve acquired Dream Theater’s album releases with Instrumental mixes whenever they were made available. My personal collections of Dream Theater releases with Instrumental mixes:
- Black Clouds & Silver Linings (2009)
- A Dramatic Turns of Events (2011)
- Distance Over Time (2019)
- A View from the Top of the World (2021)
- Parasomnia (2025)
Parasomnia tracklist:
- In The Arms Of Morpheus (Overture)
- Night Terror
- A Broken Man
- Dead Asleep
- Midnight Messiah
- Are We Dreaming? (Interlude)
- Bend The Clock
- The Shadow Man Incident
Right if the bat, the record contains 2 Instrumental tracks out of 8. That leaves 6 other tracks that have the different Instrumental mixes. Still worth getting the Deluxe Edition of the record.
On another note, the artworks in the Deluxe Edition are underwhelming. Blame that on the overused Computer Generated Slops, also known as AI Generated Slops.
I both like and feeling underwhelmed by this record. Probably I’ve become jaded when it comes to Dream Theater’s music.
Parasomnia
It is February 7, 2025 and Dream Theater new record “Parasomnia” is officially released. It is the first record by the band since their founding member and drummer who left in 2010, rejoined the band in 2023.
“There you go, Mike’s back replacing Mike who replaced the first Mike in the first place.”
With return of Portnoy in the band, this record is highly anticipated by fans. Three songs from the record were previously released:
- Night Terror
- A Broken Man
- Midnight Messiah
The first single, Night Terror, showed a glimpsed of the reunion; which seemed to miss none of the beat in the last 14 years. The second and third single reaffirmed that sentiment.
Now the record is finally released, fans get to listen to the rest of the songs. For diehard Dream Theater fans, I recommend listening to the instrumental versions of the record, which is available in the Deluxe edition.
E-Ink Price Tag
I was going to talk about this last year when I noticed a certain Big Box Retailer uses E-Ink Price Tag on the store shelves.
So far, these E-Ink Price Tags have to be individually programmed. Shoppers will not see prices automatically changed in front of them. There are no radio transmitters and receivers components on the tags we examined. These E-Ink Price Tags are reprogrammable and reusable.
Who knows when they would have ones with radio transmitters and receivers components.