As I mentioned in a previous post, shopping for windows can be a frustrating and time-consuming experience. Last night we had a visit from “window vendor #2”. As the appointment was being set up, I notified the sales office of the rules:
- Their representative would be limited to 60 minutes in my house
- I would be providing acurate CAD drawings of our house floor plan and a complete window schedule. The sales rep would not need to measure my windows
- There would be no demonstration of the vendor’s window construction, R-value, transmissivity, or other qualities
- At the end of 60 minutes, the sales rep could either provide an estimate or leave
It actually went very well. This time we got a more acceptable price quote, limited our time, and managed to get on with our evening with minimal disruption. The price is still a little high, but much less shocking than vendor #1. We have at least one more estimate to gather, then we’ll start the process of considering next steps.
Yesterday I purchased the most amazing cake pan ever. A cake pan in the shape of Cthulhu! Some unsuspecting mortal designed it to be an octopus, but it’s a small matter to add frowny eyebrows, wings, and little gummy souls being devoured. I could learn to appreciate cake in a whole new way.
That is not baked which can eternal lie.
And with strange æons even cake may rise.
Iä Iä – Cthulhu fhrosting! mmm… tasty elder gods…
The 80s Invasion gig at the Triple Door was a big success, and we are pleased that there are some great photos available for viewing online. Thanks to everyone who joined us for such a fun night, and we’ll look forward to the next time!
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Last night was a great show for 80s Invasion. We played the Triple Door, which in my opinion is Seattle’s finest live music venue. The house production crew is amazing, well organized, and very professional. This is the kind of gig musicians dream of… an amazing light system, top-tier audio system, fabulous food, great wine list, helpful cool people on staff. During our soundcheck we were informed we’d sold about 2/3 of the house in advance, which was pretty good news! The rest of the audience showed up in force and purchased tickets at the door. Courtesy of support from Jack FM, friends from work, and other local musicians, we had a very large and enthusiastic crowd. Even my mom and dad showed up (!), which marks the first time in my life when both of my parents have been at one of my gigs. After 25+ years of playing professionally, it’s surprising that it hasn’t ever happened before.
One wonderful thing that made this gig so fun was having a really good guitar tech along. My good friend Frank Snow (who is a blazing guitarist and a very smart HVAC engineer) was free that evening and kind enough to help me load in, act as tech during the show, and to load out. The load-in at the Triple Door is pretty easy. There is a freight elevator in the alley, and it’s a more-or-less simple process to roll gear down a series of ramps on the way to the stage. The small stuff is what matters, and my night really benefited from having such a skilled pair of hands helping out.
As we prepared to take the stage last night, the band gathered in the green room to share the usual pre-gig goofiness / encouragement / comradery. Excitement and plenty of smiles. You know that it’s going to be a great night when have that kind of energy in the huddle.
I enjoyed seeing so many friends from work, from my wife’s company, my next-door neighbor, and my friend (and co-worker and fellow Preon) Brad. I look forward to our next show at the Triple Door.
read more…
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As a digital photographer, I keep all of my pictures organized into folders on my computer’s hard drive. Since getting my Canon Digital Rebel XTi last year, I have generated about 20 gigs of images. I’ve kept telling myself I really need to back them up somewhere. While I consider my main desktop system to be pretty stable and issue-free, there is no guarantee that it will always function smoothly.
Last month I had an issue with another of our computers in which one of the hard drives appeared to be corrupted (thankfully it was a minor problem with a driver). My greatest concern was the contents of that hard drive; there are a number of files on it that aren’t currently backed up. One of the unfortunate rules of computing is that you probably won’t have a decent backup strategy in place until after you’ve already lost a bunch of irreplaceable data. I got the system back up and running, and after breathing a sigh of relief I realized how close I had come to being a statistic.
The incident renewed my determination to be an exception to this data-loss rule. So this weekend I spent some quality time setting up robocopy scripts on my home computers. Robocopy is a powerful command-line utility that has been around for a long time. It requires some understanding of the command-line environment and can be a bit difficult to work with. Fortunately, there is now a robocopyGUI interface that acts as a standard windows front-end to the utility.
I generally set up our computers with at least 2 hard drives. One is dedicated to the OS and to programs that require installation on the “C” drive. The other drive is for user documents and other data. I’m a bit believer in having a separate drive or partition as a backup area, so I set up robocopy to keep a mirror of my data in this space. After running it on my digital images director, I worked on copying other documents from the computers in the network. I am even thinking of backing up the windows partitions just in case.
Rehearsing with The Preons is always fun. Everybody shows up in a good mood, and we usually wind up spinning out some improvised sections within our songs. Last night we rolled through our usual live set (although in a random order) along with some of the new material we’re preparing for the next recording. Based on discussions last night, it appears we’ll be heading into the recording studio in March to begin laying down new tracks. This will coincide with the release party for the current CD “Starshine In The Devil Woods”. While I don’t appear on this release, I really like the music and am pleased at how well we play this material live. The previous bassist did an excellent job of composing lyrical melodic lines, and it’s given me a great foundation for understanding the style of the band.
Another change from last night was that I forgot to bring my custom earplugs *doh!* and wasn’t sure I wanted to stand right next to the drum set during rehearsal. So I moved out into the main part of the room with Josh and Brad. To my surprise, it actually sounds very good out there and is much easier to hear my vocals in the monitors. Since the volume level is lower in this part of the room, I’m thinking I might just permanently migrate. Sorry Janey. I’ll come visit your side of the room once in a while.
The more we work on new material, I come to realize how much I would like to get a six-string (or maybe eight-string) bass. I really want the extended range of such an instrument, and may need to pursue a custom construction to get a satisfactory configuration. Some of the bass necks and bodies available from Warmoth are probably adaptable to an 8 string setup. They seem to enjoy custom projects, so when I get ready to actually consider such a purchase I might approach them for an estimate.
For working musicians, New Year’s Eve is a great and strange annual event. During my 44 trips around the sun, I have spent more than half of my New Year’s Eves playing gigs. December 31 2007 was spent playing with pals in 80s Invasion playing at the Champagne Ball in Portland Oregon. The event was heavily promoted and well attended, with the crowd decked out in appropriate gowns and suits.
Our soundcheck presented minor frustrations. There were persistent issues with the PA system and the sound operator wasn’t on top of the situation. The subwoofers weren’t working correctly so I spent over an hour trying to diagnose the issue. For some reason the signal strength reaching the power amp was very low and distorted. I eventually discovered that both the crossover AND the sub power amp were malfunctioning, which meant we had at least two variables in play. Eventually I recommended we just bypass the crossover entirely and use another power amp with a built-in low-pass filter. We never did resolve it to my complete satisfaction, but the subs eventually produced enough bass to give us a bearable mix. In addition, the monitor mix was strangely thin and never improved. I am not certain whether this was an issue with the equipment or operators, but it was disappointing in the context of the enormous production effort supporting the event.
Once we got to soundchecking the band, I discovered there was a LOT of traffic on the local wireless channels. So much traffic that I quickly abandoned my wireless guitar system to leave the available frequencies for the wireless mics. Dragging a cable around onstage is a minimal effort, and gives me a handy prop for whip-cracking and lassoing. Indiana Jones look out!
Fortunately, the rest of the event went very smoothly. The lighting system was great. I’m delighted that so many lighting designers are switching from PAR cans to LED panels for stage lighting. LEDs are lighter, produce no heat, and offer much more flexibility. In addition, they set up several intelligent spots/projectors. Our stage was bathed in ever-changing light with gobos and strobes. The room was beautifully set up; each table had noisemakers, hats, tiaras, and beads. Plenty of great stuff was provided to ring in the new year. The DJ hosting the event was the MC for the big midnight countdown, and he invited the audience up onto the stage to join him. At least thirty people stampeded the stage, leaving me scrambling to rescue my guitars and pedalboard from the exuberant horde. With my gear safely offstage, I joined my wife for a midnight champagne toast.
Overall, a great show. We played well and the audience seemed to really enjoy themselves. We had tremendously positive feedback from the crowd and the promoter. I look forward to our next show in Portland. Read the rest of this article for our set list. read more…
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