Stayin' Home

So what is it, lack of caffeine, lack of alcohol, allergies, flu? Why do I feel so bad? In any case I am staying home from work today. I fell asleep immediately upon getting home from work yesterday, and have developed chills, fever, a cough, and a mild headache. Although I was feeling really good during the run on Sunday, I was starting to cough a bit. Not unusual after a run, but I think that may have been the start of whatever this is. I hope I'm not developing new allergies. That would be very annoying.

Coffee

Oh, I also decided to try to stop drinking coffee at work.  Since I hardly ever sleep well Sunday night, this was probably a bad day to try that.  I haven't broke down yet, but I feel like crawling into a corner and taking a nap.

Sunday Trail

Yesterday I ran a great trail.  It was long.  It was runnable (there was little hard to maneuver shiggy), and I was able to be one of only two not to get horribly lost.  Therefore, I got done way before the rest of the pack.  It's about time!  Good job retard/easy.  I felt great afterwards, and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I actually got some exercise.  So if I know I'll feel great afterwards, why is it so hard to get myself to do it during the week?

If you didn't get my entry about Ed the IBM guy, the reason I was upset is that he beat me in graduating the beer college a second time.  Yeah, that was my stupid idea.  He and I are the only ones stupid enough to actually do it.  I was supposed to graduate first though!  However, with everything that's going on I haven't been getting down there that often, so he was able to catch up and beat me.  Now that it's over, I'm going to cut down some until I get back into shape.  Trojan will think I'm copying her but really I started last week.  I've been replacing cans of beer with cans of carbonated water at home, and I've been staying at home more.  I'll still party it up on the weekends though... and when I have wings during the week, cause I can't eat wings without beer... and I guess a couple if I go back to trivia.  Okay so I'm not doing much differently, but maybe not so many pointless beers at home?

Ring

How about those ringtones that ring and then speak "incoming call?"  I'm glad there's finally a solution for those people who had to ask themselves what that noise was every time the phone rang.  Oh, it's an incoming call!

It Works

I have behaved myself this week--after Monday, anyway.  As I've been doing for the last couple of weeks, I have been working on my program instead of practicing music like I should.  Hopefully that will change this next week, because I have the bugs worked out and it doesn't crash any more.  It's finally useful!  A couple years ago when my keyboard display stopped working, I bought a shareware program that does something to the one I've been writing.  Obviously I've decided to abandon the old one.  It doesn't work with my USB MIDI interface I use with the laptop (my home computer has a gameport MIDI interface it does work with).  But even if it did work, it was still designed poorly.  I'll explain further.  The problem with programming instruments on the keyboard directly has to do with the user interface.  The output from the keyboard is poor as it only has a 2x16 display, not much room for information (and in the case of my keyboard, it doesn't work at all).  The input is also poor as there is no qwerty keyboard or numeric keypad, meaning all numbers have to be entered with a slider or up/down arrow buttons.  Text is even worse since it requires scrolling through the alphabet for each letter using those same buttons.  Now, the creator of the program I was using did an okay job displaying all of the data on the computer screen.  But what he didn't do is make the data input any easier.  He made it easier to type in instrument names, but as far as editing parameter values, he still forces the user to click on the parameter and then click up and down arrows to change the value.  That's no easier than entering the data on the keyboard itself!  So, with my Excel program, data can be typed into the cell.  Also, I can get to different parameters (Excel cells) using the arrow keys, cut/paste a whole bunch of parameters, etc.  All these normal Excel features carry over in my program.  Sooo much faster to edit... especially on the fly during practice.

6+ Random Things

So Raf has assigned me the task of posting 6 random things about myself. I am questioning my ability to come up with random things... everything I think of seems to be completely deliberate and not random at all. How about more than six things about myself from ten years ago? It's somewhat random now since I don't remember what I wrote back then.

You Win

Ed from IBM, I just found out what you did. #$%! I'm busy being productive the last few weeks and you had to pull this on me. I heard you were sweatin' it. I mean, you knew I could've had it done in one night, or two.

Well, congratulations man, ya got me. Ya bastard! I'll get you next time.

Literally!

Well, looks like I'm going to ramble all night at this point... so you've been warned. I tend to read things literally, and rewrite them in my head when they don't make any sense. Like a few minutes ago when I went to News 8 Austin a few minutes ago, and read this: "Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith talks about the harrowing realization that the Longhorns were going to win the Rose Bowl and change history." Change history?! So the UT football team has a time machine eh? Did they lose the first attempt, go back in time, steal the Trojan's playbook, and give it to themselves so they could win?

This includes the use of 'literally' by the way. Like when someone writes or says... okay I couldn't think of anything. But look what google found for me: Literally, a Web Log. I've literally only scanned the entries, but here is a blog with a purpose I fully support.

Laptop

Oh I know I mentioned I bought a laptop already, but to all of you who gave me money for Christmas/birthday--thank you for the laptop! I didn't all-out splurge, it's not new, it's a used P3 1 GHz Dell Latitude. It's pretty big and heavy but I think I like that rugged feel. And the battery lasts forever! This thing should be plenty powerful enough for anything I'd like to do, maybe even play some samples in live performance? I won't try that anytime soon though! The reason I'm writing about my laptop is that I was just thinking: "Now I can stop worrying about spilling beer on my work laptop at the bar, and start worrying about spilling beer on my own laptop at the bar." It's old enough to need a PCMCIA wireless card that hangs out the side. That might annoy some people, but I don't think it's any big deal. Yes I am at Lovejoy's right now.

Mark Your Calendars

Okay peeps, here's your invite.  Friday, February 3, 9 PM at Mulligan's. Yes, this is the same night as the Mad Cowboys, so I had some reservations about inviting y'all until I realized that MC stop playing before 9, so you can do both if you like!  We'll be playing until after 1 am, so you will get there in time to see us.  This will be my second show, and I may even be confident enough to turn up so you can hear me.  But be warned, the songs we are playing are guitar heavy so don't expect an amazing performance from yours truly.  Down the road we'll learn more keyboard-centric tunes, but for now I'll be playing mostly background stuff for their guitar standards.

If you can get wild and crazy, the band would really appreciate it.  After the relative lack of audience participation at my first show, we need it!  But, if we are bad, you can entertain yourselves by eating, playing pool, or watching sports on TV.  And since I know you'll ask:  I was warned that the beer was expensive, but they were $3.50/pint last Friday.  Not cheap but not horribly outrageous.  And don't forget to smoke 'em if ya got 'em (no smoking ban)!

Gig Aftermath

If I were to sum it up in one word: anticlimactic. Nonetheless, I had a good time and it was a first good gig for me. The place where we played is a sports/billiards bar and isn’t set up well for live music, so it’s not the kind of place you go to see a band. The band tells me the audience is unpredictable here—some nights you have lots of people listening and dancing, and other nights it’s as if you don’t exist. It’s probably better in the summer as people partying on the lake may trickle in. The audience last night could’ve been better, but we did have a couple hot chicks dancing to a few songs, so that picked us up a bit. Other things I liked about this gig:

1. We get paid.
2. We have the whole night (3 sets).
3. It’s a regular gig.

I ended up using the laptop. It crashed a couple times, as expected, but didn’t cause any serious problems. Hopefully I can fix that. Right now I think I’m probably making calls to procedures I’m not allowed to while in an event call, which occasionally throws an exception. I played on more songs than I expected to. On several that I hadn’t planned on playing on, I got bored and just followed along with organ chords. I sure wish I wrote down what key they were all in though. Sometimes I spent half the time turning the volume down and trying to figure out the key by trial and error.

Volume was an issue last night. During the “sound check” our leader asked me to play the loudest patch I had and he set the master on that. This was a mistake, as when we were playing later and I had a solo they needed me to turn up but I was already maxed out. Next time, I will sound check at half volume giving me plenty of room to get louder. Where do you guitar players set your volume when you do a sound check? I assume you have your volume knob somewhere near the middle, right?

I’m not sure how long the band has been together, but they seem to be getting frustrated by the lack of paying gigs. The main goal of the band is to succeed as a business, in other words, what kind of music we play doesn’t matter so much to us, we just want to play music that people would like to hear and therefore would hire us to play. I’m completely on board with that goal. Right now I would just like to be a working musician. Once I get my chops back, I may decide to pursue more creative musical endeavors.

Gig Tonight

I apologize for not inviting any of y'all to my gig tonight, but I hope you understand.  There are too many unknowns and if I go down in flames I'd rather you not see it!  There is another show in a couple weeks and you can check it out then.  Unfortunately, I will have to miss the February Mad Cowboys show because it is on the same night.  Oh well, at least there's no more appropriate excuse for missing it.

I was up until nearly 2 last night, so I'll be lucky if I don't fall asleep and miss the gig altogether.  At least I got a lot done yesterday.  I bought a used laptop, installed Office, MIDI drivers, browsers, etc., mapped another dozen songs or so, and got my program in a stable condition, which I will attempt to use tonight.  Right now all the program does is select the appropriate patch after typing in a few letters of a song title, but I imagine next week I'll be able to finish the display to show where each instrument is mapped on the keyboard.  Many songs have an organ on the lower half, horns on the top, occasionally a drum effect on one particular note.  It's a little hard to keep track of where everything is for 40 songs in my head, so that display will come in quite handy.

Yes I Did

"Shapes of Things" / Yardbirds - First song I hear upon entering. I miss my oldies station! Nice march feel.

"I'm Working My Way Back to You" / Detroit Spinners - Pick up the tempo and set it to a disco beat. A completely unnecessary version of the Four Seasons' hit.

"I Want Candy" / The Strangeloves - I've heard the Bow Wow Wow version so many times, I was no longer sure there was an original oldies version. That and it's so easy to get confused with "Hand Jive" which has that same Bo Diddley beat. Is there a more recognizable rhythm? Clap it for someone and guaranteed one of those two songs will come to their mind.

"Here Comes My Baby" / Cat Stevens - I can never tell at the beginning of this song whether I'm going to hear it or "If You Wanna Be Happy" by Jimmy Soul cause they both start with similar drums and cheering. Frankly I'd rather have heard "Happy" cause that line must be so true. If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife! The Stevens song however features a whistle solo. More whistle solos, less guitar solos!

"It's Raining Again" / Supertramp - This song sounds FLAT. Not pitch wise, just.. no energy. They even use a synthesizer harmonica. Well hey they wouldn't want to risk anyone breathing any life into this one. Here is a song that if covered would easily improve on the original. Or if played live. The thing is, neither of those two things will ever happen.

Self Eval

Ugh--so my employee self-evaluation was due today.  I haven't had time to do it outside of work, and work itself has been pretty busy too.  I spent the last hour or so going through old emails trying to think of stuff to write down.  Finding all those emails from and to the ex-girlfriend sure was a pleasant surprise--ugh.  I basically ended up taking last year's submittal and deleting a bunch of stuff.  There's just isn't seem to be anything left to improve or fix compared to my first few years.  Either that or I don't think its possible (or possible to get permission) to improve anything.  Or I don't care.  I had wings last night but I think I need to get some more now.

Progress

I'm making a little progress getting ready for Friday, but I'm paying for it today since I've been staying up so late.  Last night I was able to get copies of all the songs and listen to most of them, also wrote some notes for each and am deciding which I will definitely play (the ones we practiced), which ones I will probably play (those we haven't practiced together but definitely require a keyboard part), and those I won't play (guitar-centric songs, songs I'm not very familiar with).  Tonight will be split between programming the instrumentation, programming the computer (I'm making enough progress on my Excel sheet that I may consider using it on Friday), and maybe, just maybe, actually practicing some stuff.  Trivia will have to wait once again.

On a side note, most of the reason I was up late was I didn't get home 'til after 10 from dinner (goodbye Brownie).  I think I have to give up on Plucker's @ 183.  Every time I've been there the service has consistently sucked.  We waited far too long for everything last night.  The table, the food, the beer, etc.  Having to wait for a table would've been fine if they didn't keep telling us it would be ready in 5-10 minutes.  But since my first beer took so long I went up to the bar to get my second.  What was slightly amusing was how the waiter finally brought over a basket for our bones halfway through the meal, and then in his one moment of attentiveness a few minutes later asked if he should take the basket away when we still had plenty of wings left.  Idiot.  The last time I was there the waiter was equally boneheaded forgetting things and so on.  Maybe it's time to finally try Wing-Stop.

Weekend News

Some of you know that I went to El Paso (and Juarez, Mexico) this weekend.  Everyone else is wondering... "Why on Earth would you do that?  Why didn't you visit me instead?"

Sunday I got a voice mail I was expecting.  Since it's been a week and a half since I last talked to them, I assumed it was bad news.  But surprisingly it wasn't—I have been asked to join the band I tried out for, and I accepted.  It would've been nice to know a week ago, since the first gig is this Friday, we won't practice again before that, and I only know about 1/3 of the songs so far.  Can you say "winging it?"

Up Late Coding

Well I didn't wake up early today so I didn't run.  In fact I slept in a bit and was an hour late for work.  Why?  I was up until 2 am trying to get that damn program to work.  Does anyone know anything about memory allocation and pointers in VBA?  I should stop trying to do things VBA was not designed to do, but it would be really, really nice if I could get this to work in Excel.  For some strange reason I seem to enjoy torturing myself with problems like these.

All this is telling me what I've always known, that I should be a software developer—which is probably 50% of the jobs where I work.  Unfortunately since I have no "real experience" getting one of those jobs would be difficult.

64-62

Thanks Wisconsin for almost giving me a heart attack tonight as you barely squeezed out a win versus unranked Minnesota. I was sure the wings or burgers would give me one first but keep this up and you'll have me in the ER by March Madness.

Obligatory Song from Last Night (Nite?)

"I Wonder What She's Doing Tonite" / Boyce & Hart
I wonder how many times in the last twenty years I've asked myself that question?  Not that I'd ever call and find out!  Boyce & Hart were a songwriting-duo that wrote a bunch of happy pop songs for other groups, most notably the Monkees.  This was their only song they recorded themselves that became a hit.  I like trumpet solos... other instruments too.  We need more solos performed by other instruments and less by guitar.

Up Early

For whatever reason, I almost always wake up really early on Mondays, at like 5 am.  For the longest time I would fight to get back to sleep and then wake up really tired for work at 7 or so.  Lately, I've just been getting up.  It doesn't seem to matter.  After work, I'm always tired whether I got up or not.  Last night I had to get some wings on the way home and they have the strange effect of putting me in a comatose state sometimes.  That's what happened last night—got home, and lights out.

What is strange is that I got up at 5 am this morning.  Maybe it's understandable that I woke up since I went to sleep so early, but the fact that I actually got up and out of bed two days in a row at 5 am—that's what is strange.  I managed to fix the bug in my keyboard program before work (I haven't done extensive tests so I might be wrong).  What I really need to do is convince myself to go running that early.  That's the only way I would be able to continue any routine into the summer when it gets too hot to run in the evening.  Maybe I will set out some workout gear tonight and try to get myself to go tomorrow morning if it happens again.  Even if I do go, though, the weekend will probably screw up anything I get started.

Whoops

Ugh, I just screwed up something at work.  It's actually bothering me too... maybe that's a good sign???  I think I sense wings in my immediate future.

Blah Weekend

The weekend was okay, but just okay.  Actually maybe not even that good.  Mad Cowboys was fun as usual on Friday but I went home right after that.  Saturday I hoped to get some stuff done but didn't get motivated at all 'til 3 or 4.  I took my motorcycle out for a spin down to Taco Xpress as I hadn't rode it for close to a month.  I almost bought a used laptop for $400, but decided I wanted to make more progress on my program first.  Excel however is not cooperating.  I can't seem to get it to read long messages sent from the keyboard, only short ones.  I worked on it for a couple of hours before giving up in frustration. Then I went out to sing some karaoke but got there too late; they were booked until bar time.  Sunday instead of continuing to watch Wisconsin beat up on Michigan State I decided to cut up my legs by walking a couple of miles through thorny vines.  Not fun at all.  I left and went to Ginny's and Poodle Dog, but was really just not into it.  Oh well.  That's it for me and I'll try to do better the next time.  Goodnight, Canada!

Final Audition I Hope

Yep, I got called back for a second audition last night.  I was glad that this time it didn't consist of playing the same songs as last week, instead they dusted off some tunes they hadn't played in awhile, and attempted a new song.  As I had no prior knowledge of playing any of these, hopefully it demonstrated my ability to pick up things quickly.  I need to find a tactful way to convey my blog username, as they kept on trying to put chord printouts in front of me for songs I hadn't practiced yet.  No thanks, don't need 'em!  I don't trust the chord sheets you find on the Internet anyway, most of them have mistakes.  The audition was twice as long as my first one, because the other guy they are considering could not make it last night.  The bad news is that they are going to have him over at their next practice, which means that I'm going to have to wait yet another week to find out if I'm in or not.  And then they have a gig the weekend after that, not a lot of time to get up to speed.  I think I may pick up a laptop this weekend to use as an auxiliary display for the keyboard.  I'm trying to decide whether I should go with a new or used one.

My Usual

When I posted somewhere a link to my New Year's entry from last year, which talked about Subway, someone mentioned that I should go to Thundercloud instead.  The reasons for that I may talk about later, but in response, over the past year I have actually transitioned to Thundercloud and probably go there more often than Subway at this point.  It got me thinking, what are some of my regular places and orders?

Taco X-press - two migas with two bullets of the red sauce and one bullet of the green leafy sauce each and a Coke (since I've moved I don't go here much at all anymore)
Thundercloud – California club on wheat w/provolone w/mayo and spicy mustard, add jalapenos; cheddar Sun chips; Dr Pepper
Freebirds – one Freebird burrito (steak or chicken), w/cayenne tortilla, black beans, rice, mixed cheese, garlic, salsa, onions (red or white), lettuce, jabanero sauce (this has kinda replaced my usual Saturday afternoon Taco X-press trip)

and of course

10 Three-Mile Island wings w/bleu cheese; two Miller lite drafts

Anyone want to mention their usual orders?

Second Audition

It's not over yet!  The band leader called yesterday, and they are struggling to decide between the three keyboard players they auditioned.  So, he had a few more questions to ask that might help them make a decision.  I don't think I've been eliminated yet as I stated my ability to sing, play other instruments, and willingness to play all different kinds of music.  It appears my biggest weakness may be my lack of equipment (though they were impressed by my ability to get multiple simultaneous instruments out of my one good keyboard), but I can fix that—I'm really looking for an excuse to get a new keyboard.  He said it may result in a second audition tonight and will let me know today.  It would've been nice if I had practiced a bit more last night (really I should say 'this week'), but I was distracted by the Rose Bowl.  And when I wasn't distracted by that, instead of practicing I was programming the keyboard instead.

One handicap of my keyboard is that the display doesn't work.  That means that I have to hook it up to my computer if I need to do anything more than change instrument sounds.  Last week I was able to program it for all of the audition songs, but found myself a little frustrated with the computer program I used to program it with.  So, of course, I've taken on the task of writing my own program to interface with the keyboard.  And I'm doing it in a pretty ridiculous programming language—Microsoft Excel VBA.  Why?  Well I can actually put things together pretty quickly in Excel, a lot of that has to do with the GUI which many of us are very familiar with.  You'd be surprised what Excel can do.  This for instance, is something I wrote that started out as an Excel spreadsheet.  It has since been converted to Java.  I'm not sure that was the correct choice though.  If you are bored, see if you can figure out what the hell it is and is supposed to do.

Rose Bowl

I have no plans for the Rose Bowl game tonight.  Do I care?  Will I watch it?  After all, my team already won their bowl game.  It might be fun to be out somewhere and be part of the excitement and celebration if they win.  But there's a good chance they won't, so I don't know.

Badgers Victorious

Yesterday was a great day for the home team. It was Barry Alvarez's last game coaching for the Wisconsin Badgers. Here is a guy that took over a horrible football program (a 9-36 record previous four years) my freshman year, and, by my senior year, coached Wisconsin to their first Rose Bowl win. I didn't know whether I was going to head out to watch the Capital One Bowl vs. Auburn yesterday, but after a strong Badger start (in which Auburn's first two possessions resulted in turnovers) I knew I couldn't watch this alone. I headed down to a downtown sports bar where both Auburn and Wisconsin alumni had gathered. The #21 ranked Badgers dominated #7 Auburn for the entire game, winning 24-10. What a way to send off Wisconsin's winningest football coach.

First Post

I don't know where this entry is going, but let me start by wishing everyone a Happy New Year. I had fun New Year's Eve, but sometime during party #3 I started not feeling so good and had to crash early (granted this will still way after midnight). Could it have been due to something I don't usually drink, like champagne? Or the wings? I dunno, but I don't feel that bad very often.

Sunday afternoon I managed to roll my ankle (the right one as usual) after only running about a quarter of a mile. So I figured that would prevent me from running for awhile, which may be one of the few things that puts me in a good mood lately. Thankfully it was not so bad--the pain is practically gone now and I may try a run to Walnut Creek from my apartment tonight.

Sunday evening was pretty cool cause I really enjoyed Sunny Sweeney's band at Poodle Dog. I'm going to have to go and see her again soon. Redd Volkaert must enjoy her music as well as he was in the audience.

I haven't heard back from the band I auditioned for yet. Maybe it's too soon to find out, as maybe they still have more guys to try out. I thought I did pretty well. I guess all that matters though is that I'm glad I did it and will keep doing it until I get something going.

Things are going alright yet I'm not in the best mood this morning. Maybe it's the fact that it's the first normal day of the year and nothing seems any different. Just the same old thing. Someone reminded me Sunday, life is f'ed up. Ain't that the truth.