I finished two songs by creating half assed mixes. The RPM Challenge’s Record Every Month challenge thing will have an entry this month. I just don’t know which of the two songs to submit. I think the second one might be a smidge better but I put some wobble on the rhythm guitars and I am starting to think I shouldn’t have. Also, the first song is in 7/8 time so… yeah.
Now I can go to sleep. Insert the sigh of relief here.
I am probably going to get my two songs finished for the month of June. File it under the RPM Challenge’s Record Every Month challenge. Yesterday I wasn’t sure if I would be able to finish a song or two, but I had a decent day music wise and now I am in good shape.
Last night before bed I wrote lyrics and melodies for the two songs that got guitar tracks earlier in the day (see the previous post). This morning I cut my exercise short and used the time to record vocals. Both songs were cranked out quickly and poorly. Tonight after dinner I was able to sneak back into the cellar and record lead guitars for both songs. I did so on a guitar with old and dead strings and with a left hand that is 100% free from calluses because I don’t play enough these days.
Oh my goodness, do my finger tips hurt right now. Oh the pain. Oh the horrible icky pain. Ouch-town, population: Me, bro.
I’ll mix the two songs tomorrow night after work. Probably while sitting up in bed wishing I was asleep. You know how it is.
Enjoy tonight’s crappy photos that are basically the same as the crappy photos on last night’s post except I am wearing a work-appropriate collared shirt today where I was wearing an awesome Rush Snakes and Arrows Live t-shirt yesterday.
I told myself I was going to write and record an album’s worth of music this month. 10 songs or 35 minutes. That was the plan.
I have failed, epically.
I started working on seven songs. As of this morning they were only midi bass and drums tracks with a midi guitar track acting as a guide for when I record the actual guitars.
It has been two weeks since I did anything musical at all. Yeah, the 10 song plan isn’t happening and the seven songs are going to mostly fail as well. Last month I wrote and recorded two songs. That’s my new goal. Call it a single. One song for the A-side and another for the B-side.
I put rhythm guitars onto two of the songs today. That’s good. I’m still probably going to fail though because now I have to write lyrics and a melody for both songs, then I have to record the vocals, then I have to record the lead guitars, then I have to mix the two songs and I only have two days left in the month. Most of my recording time takes place in the morning before work, and one of the two remaining days is not only a work in the office day, but its a work in the Foxborough office day and Foxborough is super far away from home so I won’t have any before work time.
So before I sleep tonight I have to write the lyrics and the melodies, and then tomorrow before work I have to record the vocals. Then probably after work I will have to record the leads. Then I can mix after work tomorrow.
Before any of that happens though, I have to have a watch-a-movie-on-the-living-room-couch with my beautiful wife. We’re watching Project Hail Mary again. Know that it is a great movie that is made better by a series of t-shirts with science jokes on them. If you haven’t seen the movie, you should. Then once you’ve seen it you should write a song or two.
I got the scans back for seven rolls of film today. What have we learned? We learned that I don’t like Harman Phoenix II. I didn’t like Harman Phoenix I either, but now I officially don’t like II… and I have a bunch more of it in my film stash. Crud.
I also learned that Lomography 800 is grainy.
And finally, Kodak Ektacolor (the film formerly known as Portra) is awesome.
More film fun to come in the next day or two.
Well, that was a crazy work day.
One of our customers did something yesterday afternoon that they really should not have done. Had they asked me about it I would have warned them off. I wasn’t asked though and they did it and it blew up.
The messes fell like dominoes. The thing they ran caused this one thing to go bad, which in turn caused this other thing to go bad, which then caused a third thing to go bad.
First thing this morning I was asked if I know of a way to clean up the mess. I said no, it just needs to run its course. Half an hour later the problem turned into a teamwork adventure. I threw the question out to my whole staff. Any ideas? One guy says that this one thing includes this other thing that we could sort off of. I say that the issue is past the point in the process. Someone else asks if that one thing includes a link to this other thing that is the actual point where things are stuck? A third guy comes back with woah, there is a link.
So loop through the second thing, get the linked data, link back to the first thing and check the sort item, if it is what we’re looking for, kill it off. Run that over the entire million and a half records and boom, problem solved.
Another guy figures out that there is a third thing that is feeding the first thing. We had been under the impression that the problem had moved beyond that point but it was still processing and making things worse. That third thing has a value we can sort off of as well. A second loop was written to kill off anything that is still feeding the problem. That loop had to be run first.
The only other problem came when the first loop finished and we had to start the second loop… everyone was at lunch. Shit. I had people pushing for progress and I had to stall a little so that the writer of the loop could come back from lunch and execute his code. I did some of his prep work and fortunately he came back before the customer started asking questions and everything went off without a hitch.
Teamwork, man. Three customer service programmers and one development engineer all working together to fix a problem that none of us even realized was possible. Fan-freakin’-tastic. All the while there was me, your humble narrator, getting on conference calls with the customer trying to keep them from freaking out. My job description doesn’t really include dealing with customers directly but it does happen now and then. Today was one of those rare days and I was the point person on most of these calls. I’m guessing that they could tell that the big red head introvert talking to them was not comfortable in the role, but I’m also guessing they could tell that I was getting a little excited at the prospect of my team doing something that had never been done before.
Of course, now that we know we can do it… here’s hoping we never have to do it again.
I have worked in the office three times this week. I am supposed to average twice a week. Two weeks ago I only made it in once. This week I went three times to make up for it.
Three days……
Damn, that was a lot. Remember the old days when I worked five days in the office? How the hell did I do that? Three days… it feels like a lifetime.
One more work day left this week and I am going to work from home. Insert the sound of a really emphatic sigh of relief right here.
Change of subject. On Sunday I dropped seven rolls of film in the mail. On Wednesday (yesterday) I got the notification saying that they had arrived at the Darkroom Lab. It is now a quarter to nine on Thursday evening. No scanned images yet. Fingers crossed I don’t have to wait too long. I wanna see how shitty my shitty photos look. I’m ready.
I’m ready for the weekend. Are you ready? I’m ready.
The US is shit. Completely. Why would anyone from outside of the US chose to come here?
Then again, the Scottish soccer fans who came to Boston for the World Cup were an absolute delight. Boston’s fun level increased by at least 600%. Of course they left Boston and went to maga central, Miami where the police cracked down on the fun. You know, like fucking nazis do.
On top of that, there is the glorious Rush tour. Two Canadians (Geddy and Alex), one German (Anika), and… I don’t actually know where Loren Gold is from. He played with The Who, is he English? He played with Chicago, is he American? There’s this thing these days called “the internet” and I used it to look up his professional website and it says he’s American… so he doesn’t actually count for this discussion.
What was I saying? Oh yeah, a band with a bunch of non-Americans who have a crew who is probably also made up of a lot of non-Americans. They played four shows in the US and then two in Mexico. They left the country and then had to come back into the country for a show tonight in Texas… and the show has been postponed because of some issue at the border crossing.
What was it I said at the start of this post? The US is shit. Miami giving the Tartan Army shit? Texas border crossing giving Rush shit? We are so unworthy. The fuck?
It’s only 5:00pm right now and I am probably jinxing things by writing this but…
For the first time in about two weeks I have not had any real stomach issues today. No hunger pains, no nausea, no weirdness after drinking water (see my previous post).
When I wrote about it last night, was that all I needed to do to fix whatever was wrong? I haven’t had any pain after drinking anything today and I’ve already hit my minimum of 64 ounces. I haven’t had any pain or queasiness when eating and I’ve already hit my 80 grams of protein minimum. No hunger pains before or after eating. Just… nothing. Normal.
Now if we could just do something about the fascist pedophile in the white house. That would be sweet. One problem at a time though, right? Fingers crossed the stomach trend continues throughout the rest of the day and whatever was going on has finally stopped. Again, 100% guaranteed I just jinxed the whole thing. Dumb ass.
Four years along with gastric bypass surgery. Am I seeing a new situation right now?
If I don’t eat enough I get stomach aches. They are literally hunger pains. When I eat something, they go away.
Every so often something in my metabolism (maybe?) changes and instead of being able to go a few hours without getting any pain, I get maybe an hour and a half or so. I get pain much faster, and it’s a little more severe. This has happened 3–4 times since the surgery. It lasts about a week then it stops and goes back to “normal”. I assume I have a virus or something that affects my metabolic rate and I just have to ride it out.
I’m in one of those periods right now and it’s lasted a couple of weeks. Longer than usual… if usual is even a thing. I think there was one instance where it was longer than this but it’s hard to remember. This time though… am I seeing something different?
When my stomach is hurting and I eat something, the pain goes away. When I drink though… drinking water didn’t used to have much of an affect at all. This time? I think I am starting to notice that drinking water actually makes me feel worse. Even more, there have been a couple of times in the last few days where I was feeling okay, I had a drink, and I started hurting?
What?
Water hurts and food helps? What the fuck, stomach? I’m ready to go back to “normal” now, thanks.
In other, unrelated news, our HBO Max subscription (which is a bundle with Disney and Hulu) doesn’t include House of the Dragon? Really? The fuck?
Happy Fathers day to all who are fathers or who play the roll of a father in someone’s life. Whether you are a biological father, a step father (like me), or a single mom who covers both the mother and father responsibilities (a good definition for the word “hero” if I ever heard one), then today is your day. I don’t know about the rest of you, but the one accomplishment I am most proud of in my life is that in September of 2007 a six year old girl and a four year old boy let me be a part of their lives, and in the nearly 19 years that have passed since then they haven’t changed their minds. Frankly I am honored and I hope I’ve been up to the challenge. I’m sure I’ve failed left and right, but over all… here’s hoping I’m doing right by them.
That’s not really the point of this post though, it’s just a nice bonus. The point of this post is photos! I went on another morning photo walk today. This time I hit three riverwalk type things in Lowell, MA. The Wamesit Falls Overlook, the… whatever the riverwalk along the Merrimack River near the Rourke Bridge is called, and a third little thing that I never saw before but noticed as I drove past that was basically a gazebo and a boat launch and a lot of graffiti.
I finished three rolls of film. One roll of Phoenix II 200 in 120 in my Lubitell, a roll of the new Kodak Ektacolor 400 (that is supposed to be just Portra 400 under a different name?) that I loaded in the Nikon N90 yesterday to use at my nephew’s graduation party (but only took a few shots), and another Phoenix II 200 (this time in 35mm), again in the N90. I took those three rolls and the four rolls I shot on last weekend’s photo walk adventure and shipped them off to The Darkroom Lab earlier. Give them a couple of weeks and then I’ll share any of those that don’t suck… assuming there are at least one or two that don’t suck. We’ll have to wait and see.
The rule on these little jaunts is to shoot film while walking away from the car and then digital while walking back to the car. The twist on the digital last week was that I used a lens that came in the kit with the N90. I used the other lens from that kit today. It’s an AF Nikkor 50mm 1:1.8. I got a lens with exactly the same specs when I bought my broken Nikon F401 last year, but despite the identical specs it is definitely a different lens. I have dubbed this one 50mm f/1.8 number two. I actually used it on all shots taken on both Nikon cameras today. The N90 and Z5 (with the FTZii adapter, of course).
But enough of my yappin’, here come some pics!
First, a bunch from the Wamesit Falls Overlook, which is a riverwalk along (and in two places, across) the Concord River.
Now we skip the second stop, which was the boat launch with all of the graffiti because it was such a short visit that the digtal camera never made it out of the bag. So instead we move on to the VFW Highway and the Merrimack River.
So there you have it. Another couple of hours on another Sunday morning, wandering around like a nerd with a bag full of cameras. I am thinking the next time I do this will be just after the 4th of July. I have an idea about going to the Esplanade in Boston and seeing the aftermath of the Pops concert and the fireworks. We will see.
For now though, in closing…
Inside the Red Head's Head 