Worked at the Showroom all day – I set table seating in the Showroom for 470 seats pretty much by myself.  It was a long day and I’m glad it’s over. 

After work, I packed up the kids and took them to Gramma & Grampa’s so they could hang out while I went to my meetings tonight.  I stopped at the InsideOut gallery hoping to start setting up for tomorrow night, but Mike wasn’t around.  That’s OK – it’ll keep until I get there tomorrow afternoon.  After that stop, I went to our meeting at the Playhouse concerning the Comedy Festival prep.  I’m glad someone had info on the screen and projector for the Mike Toomey show.  I was also told that Rikk from Blue Water Sound will be meeting me at the Playhouse on Friday morning to set up the video gear.  Stu will also be there to help me run cables and set up the audio gear – a HUGE help.  Looks like I’m in for a busy (but FUN!) weekend.  I have to stop in at the State Theater after sound check to get my Comedy Fest credentials and shirt.

OK, that’s enough for now.  For today’s music, a visit from Victor Wooten (bassist for Bela Fleck and the Flecktones) and Steve Smith (ex-Journey drummer)…a very cool little clip of the two of them trading licks.  Enjoy!

Victor Wooten Vs Steve Smith

OK, OK…updates have just been waaaay too far between. Life’s been busy…what can I tell you? It’s been one of those kind of lives lately. We survived the Holidays without too much aggravation and I now have three kids in the double-digits (Cam turned 10 yesterday – Happy Birthday, buddy!!). I’m finally starting to get additional work other than just the handful of hours I can eke out of the Showroom. On top of that, I’m also working for the Comedy Festival – woohoo! I get to do sound at the Old Town Playhouse for some of the acts performing for the Festival. Word has it that this could lead to other work, perhaps with the Film Festival this summer…who knows?

The experiment here is with Scribefire’s video embedding tool. If this works, “Quiet Little Voices” from We Were Promised Jetpacks should appear in a small box right about here…

WOOHOO! Looks like it worked! I think I’m gonna start using those instead of the little animated gif’s I was putting in before. Each time I (finally) do an update, I’ll include a video clip – might be music, might be something else.

Musically speaking, not much is happening right now. I sent the guitar in for service and the bill for the work came to about $165. As I’m barely working right now and the bill was a lot more than I originally thought about, the guitar is languishing at teh shop waiting for the work to be paid for. In the meantime, I finally got a pic of my current music workstation:

(Click the photo for a slightly larger view)

The signal goes from the guitar to the Tascam US-122 USB interface to the laptop. I can monitor through either powered studio monitors or headphones (the usual case as it lets me work on music when the rest of the house is asleep). I got a copy of Guitar Rig 4 Pro from a friend, which gives me an unreal array of tone-shaping tools on the computer. The same disk that had Guitar Rig also had a copy of SoundForge 9, so it looks like the portable studio is more or less complete. All I need now is a decent vocal mic and I can record at home. I’m still on the hunt for a small amp (in the 30-60 watt range) and effects for live use. I’ve seen folks using Guitar Rig in live settings, but they are using the version that is adjusted with a foot controller. That version is going for around $400 new – a bit out of my reach at this point, but that’s OK. What I have now ought to do fine for the time being.

If I can read this on my blog, then it worked.

Apparently, I picked up some crap along the way.  I had to reformat and reload my laptop…AGAIN.  Aggravating, sure, but at least I had pretty much everything backed up to the point that nothing substantial got lost.  The biggest groaner of the whole thing was getting the updates for Windows.  On two different attempts, the updates got all screwed up for one reason or another.  On the third attempt, I got smart and downloaded the service packs directly from Microsoft, putting them on a thumb drive.  After I reinstalled the OS and the basic batch of drivers, I installed both service packs in order.  Sure enough, everything worked great after that.  I’m still reinstalling some stuff, so the process continues.

I did have a project keeping me busy along the way – a guitar.  A Strat copy, to be exact.  I found it for under a hundred bucks at Zamar’s and thought it might make a good rebuild project.  It was in rough shape to begin with, but it was at least playable.  I noted early on that the neck that was on it was not the proper size for the body.  This was apparent in that the base of the neck was much narrower than the neck pocket in the guitar body.  It was easy enough to swap out, though.  After refinishing the body (badly, but it got done), having the electronics cleaned up, and mounting a new neck of proper size, I got it back in shape. I have also replaced the bridge along the way.  I got hold of a Tascam US-122 USB interface and a copy of Guitar Rig 3 to use for tone shaping.  Looks like I could conceivably gig with that setup with a DI going straight to the board.  Now all I have to do is get some new music worked up and I might get out and start playing again.

Well, that’s about it for now.  Lots more to say since the last update, but I’m frankly too tired at this point to put it down coherently.  In the meantime, a cool trick with a pilates ball…

We got a phone call in the middle of the night on Monday the 27th that jolted me right out of bed.  It was my wife’s mom telling up that she got word from Colorado that my wife’s brother Aaron was jumped on his way home from the store earlier that night.  He had apparently been beaten quite severely and was not conscious.  About an hour later, she called us again to inform us that he had passed away.

According to the information we have so far, he stopped into a liquor store near his house with his girlfriend and one of her friends.  As they were leaving, the girls got jumped by two guys for the likely purpose of robbing them.  As he was paying at the counter inside, Aaron looked out and saw what was happening.  As he went out to break it up and pull the attackers off his girlfriend, the attackers turned to him and laid into him full-on.  He was beaten to the point that he was put unconscious and bleeding severely before the attackers ran off, leaving them there.  Unfortunately, he never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead at the scene.  The girls were treated and released with minor injuries.

Amy, naturally, took the news hard.  She took Monday off work and spent most of the day at her folks’ place helping them get things together for the funeral arrangements.  As it sits right now, Aaron’s body is being released by investigators today or tomorrow and being brought back to Traverse City.  The visitation is Sunday and the funeral service is on Monday afternoon.

Not much I can add to this one right now.  We’ll Miss you, Aaron.

Yeah, yeah…I think I have successfully blown whatever update schedule I ever wanted to get going for this blog right out of the water.  ADD’s a bitch sometimes because things like that get screwed up all the time.

Anyway…

Amy and I finally got to take some semblance of a vacation a few weeks ago.  Once the kids were done with school for the year, we decided to take a quick trip up north to Mackinaw City for a few days with her folks.  We spent a day walking around on Mackinac Island and looking at…stuff.  The day we were to head home, we decided to take a little side trip up into da U.P.  We spent a few hours at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum on Whitefish Point.  They have the original ship’s bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald on display as well as other artifacts from a few other wrecks off Whitefish Point.  Much to my surprise, this was one of the few times I’ve been up there that there was NO shipping traffic on Whitefish Bay while we were there.  There’s usually something to look at out on the water, but nothing this time.  We hung out and walked on the beach anyway, finding enough interesting beach stones to fill one pocket on the camera bag.  After the museum, we went over to Tahquomenon Falls where we got feasted on by a rather tenacious swarm of mosquitoes.  This was the part the kids hated.  Regardless, we got some updated pics of the kids and some cool shots at the falls as well as at the museum.  This whole trip brought me to the conclusion that I really want to get my grubby little hands on a digital SLR camera that will outdo the little point-and-shoot I’m using now. 

Work has been about the same, but I’m also getting a few side jobs along the way as well.  I’ve been working a bit with Adrian over at the Inside Out gallery, learning a bit about digital sound editing and getting to know a digital sound board.  The way things are going now, I might be able to get a few days of extra work over there to fill in for the work I’m not getting at the Showroom.  I saw the most recent schedule and they don’t even have me on for the busiest night this summer.  Kinda boots out their gripe about not picking up their way of doing things if they don’t schedule me for anything, now, doesn’t it?

That’s enough harps for now, got things to do this afternoon before I go to work tonight.  In the meantime, the lizard goes marching on…

I had to reformat and reload my laptop yesterday.  Somewhere along the line, I must have gained onto a bad file somewhere along the line and it stalled the entire system to the point that I could not get anything to work.  After hemming and hawing and growling and muttering various obscenities under my breath for several hours, I finally broke down and set up for a reinstall.  Thankfully, about 90% of what I lost in the reformat was backed up on my portable hard drive, so very little real harm was done.  It took me until right about now to get everything up and running again.  Well, hey…at least I cleaned out the system.

We had to let our option on the house go since we could not find a mortgage lender that would work with us.  To be completely honest, I’m not surprised and I don’t blame them at this point – our credit sucks right now and both my wife and I aren’t making the kind of money that would support a mortgage.  If nothing else, we were able to get a credit report out of the whole process so now we can dive in and do some cleanup on the things they found in the credit report.  Once the cleanup is done and Amy and I find better jobs, we should be in far better shape.

I went guitar shopping last weekend to see if I can get myself into a new axe.  So far, it looks like I’m taking the low-bucks approach and starting off with a Squier Stratocaster.  The good part of that is that as time goes on, I can upgrade the parts as necessary and basically build my own custom guitar as I go.  I’m also looking at a Digitech RP355 digital multi-effects unit that I can use both with the Strat as well as with my acoustic.  I have a Dean Markley sound hole pickup for the acoustic that I can run through the Digitech unit to shape the tone.  Adrian and I might (if we both get some time) do some recording over the summer and we will possible see about putting together something this fall that we can get out into a few clubs.  I still to this day, every once in a while, run into folks who remember us from the Rising Sun shows from about fifteen years ago.  I miss those days.

Family-wise, things are plugging along nicely.  Amy’s still working out at Turtle Creek, but she’s still actively looking for somethign closer to home.  I’m still working for the showroom and will likely get a few musical or DJ side jobs over the summer.  The extra money will come in handy.  The kids are, naturally, antsy to be done with school and get out to enjoy the summer.  The mutt is, well…the mutt.   Right now, he’s curled up under the dining room table, snoozing.  He gets to spend more days outside in the fresh air now that the weather has warmed up. 

Okay, that’s enough of this for now.  At least I found the time to pop an update into this thing.  At some point today, I might just change the photo at the top of the page to something more summery.  In the meantime, the beat goes on…

I had the distinct pleasure of stopping in at the lot in Traverse City this morning and making the last payment on my car.  The Zooker is now MINE!  Now, I can start getting some other stuff paid up and maybe start putting some money into the car.  I still want to put the rest of the roof rack on it since I mounted the tracks and baseplates for the Yakima towers last summer.  Adam will be starting his unofficial apprenticeship with Bob Purvis pretty soon and one of the projects they will be working on will be a grille guard for the Zooker.  I went up to Northport with Evan yesterday to go to the store and along the way, I saw a field full of deer grazing on the grass and grain exposed by the snowmelt.  After losing a road jousting match with a deer once already in an earlier vehicle, a grille guard is looking like a smart idea.

Amy and I went over the other day and looked at a possible new house.  The real estate agent was cool enough to let us just run around inside the house and get our own feel for the place.  Here’s a link to the listing. This could be a cool house for us if we can get the financing together.

I also decided to take a chance and put up an ad on craigslist to see if I can get some musicians together for a project I had in mind. Here’s a link to the ad I put up.  I just wanted to test the waters to see i there was any interest both in terms of players and audience.  All I can do now is wait and see what kind of responses I get, I guess.

That’s enough blabbering for now.  More to come later.  In the meantime, it’s kung fu penguin time…

Last Sunday (the 8th of March) started off nice enough.  The sun was shining and it was calm and relatively clear.  It was about what one would expect for early March in our part of Michigan.  I got the dog out for one of his daily walks and came home before Amy headed in to work.  By the time she left for work at around 2:00pm, it was starting to get cloudy out.  An hour or so later, it started to snow a little.  Gradually, the snow got heavier and heavier.  I made a quick run to the store at around 6:00 and by then, the snow was coming down so heavy that visibility was reduced to about 100 yards.  It was starting to look major and I had pretty much resigned to the idea that the kids would likely get a snow day the next morning.  Sure enough, they did.  By the time the snow stopped early Monday morning, we got about a foot and a half of new snow since the previous afternoon.  Here’s a pic of the trench we had to dig to get down the driveway:

The trench is about 20 inches deep.  This was bare pavement the previous day.

Amy ended up spending the night at work in a hotel room.  By the time she came home the next morning, she could not get into the driveway until we could dig out a space for her at the end so she could get her car out of the road.  A friend came by later and plowed us out.  By the afternoon, the roads were relatively clear and folks could get around again.

Here it is a week later and it’s up in the high 40′s.  All the snow we got last weekend is slowly turning to lumpy-oatmeal glop.  I was able to take the kids for a ride this afternoon with the car windows rolled down a bit and nobody froze.  It was good to get the car cleaned out and opened up again – frankly, it was starting to get kind of ripe in there.  It’s frightening how much junk can pile up on the floor of one’s car over a busy winter.  I almost forgot what color the carpeting was.  Word from the finance company is that last week was my last full payment and the little beast is all mine after a midget payment at the lot next Saturday.  This will free up some serious coin so we can get some other stuff caught up and maybe make improvements to the vehicle (a better stereo and a roof rack, for starters).

Anyways, that’s all for now.  In the meantime, a quick lesson in knowing your limits…

Earlier today, I found a link to a neat little application called Scribefire that allows me to post to my WordPress blog from Firefox.  This is a test shot to see how well it works.

Hmmm…looks OK in the preview.  This might make posting to this blog easier and thus the damned thing can be updated more often!  Gee…what a shocker an updated blog would be, huh?  Especially from the likes of me, no less?  Hawhawhaw!

Things are going to get interesting on the web-development front as well now.  On the suggestion from a friend, I got a copy of a content-management program called Drupal.  Looks like the learning curve is gonna be a bitch on this one.  Just when I got used to Aptana Studio, too…

More coming later.  In the meantime, time for a roll in the grass with the panda…