Month: August 2015

Not Going to Share

I finally did it last night at band practice.

I set up mics on the drums, on the bass amp, and on the guitar amp, and ran a line out from the PA, all into my Mackie board, then into my Lexicon USB interface, and then into GarageBand in stereo. It worked!

But I ain’t sharing any of it. Not this time at least.

The bass guitar is UBER loud (although the tone has a nice snap to it). The drums are really, really quiet and have no bottom end at all. The guitar is a little low compared to the vocals. Kevin’s voice is a touch on the loud side but not too bad. My voice is WAY low in the mix (just how I like it!) and needs to come up.

In other words, the mix is all but unlistenable. I knew that would happen though. I will make some adjustments on the board next week and see how it sounds, and then repeat the process the following week until I have a mix I can live with. I don’t want to take time out of practice to adjust things, so I will just do it week to week based on what sounds bad on each successive tape.

Also, I don’t think we were terribly good last night. After the last two practices being really great. I am pretty disappointed in myself. Listening to a nice clean recording just makes my shitty playing all the more obvious.

Next week I hope to have something to share. Maybe.

The New Rodent

At last, I have a picture of the new rodent living in our back yard. I’m not sure what kind of rodent it is. I thought either a groundhog or a gopher. I put two pictures on Flickr a few minutes ago and so far we have one vote for groundhog. Does the WordPress.com community agree?

What is this? Is it a gopher?

What is this? Is it a gopher?

So what do you think this little critter is?

To-Do List Check In

Let’s see how I did with the to-do list today.

1. Dunks. Check
2. Munchkins. Mmmm Mmmm good. Check
3. McKinnons. Steak tips for today, chicken breasts for tomorrow. Check.
4. Mow the lawn. My back is KILLING ME now, but it’s all done. Check.
5. Shave. Dolphin smooth. Check.
6. Poland Springs. Check.
7. Buy a Twin Reverb and a Big Muff Pi. Eh, not so much.
8. Set a timer. Done, but no reaction yet. The love of my life is very busy today. Check.
9. Buy a recycle bin. I had to do it online as Home Depot didn’t have any, but check.
10. Practice the gitter. Umm…..
11. Cook dinner on the grill. As mentioned previously, steak tips. Mmm Mmm Good. Check.
12. Watch Fear the Walking Dead. Not yet. Maybe tonight before bed. I have chimed in on a number of discussions on reddit though.
13. Sleep. It’s not bed time, but… check. I may have nodded off after dinner. More sleep to come though.

All in all, not too shabby.

I Hate Abridged Audiobooks

Watching Fear the Walking Dead has given me the urge to re-read World War Z. I figured I’d go for the audiobook and listen in the car driving to and from work. I bought it from iTunes, something I’ve never done before. It’s cool, it downloads into iBooks and plays from there instead of the Music app. Nice, huh?

The audiobook for World War Z has three tracks and runs for a little under six hours. Uh Uh, kids, that doesn’t seem right. I know it’s not that long a book, but a six hour read? No way. Too short.

Sure enough, there was nothing in there from the discussion of pre-panic profiteering in the United States (no vaccines against African Rabies). There was also nothing about the decimation of the Russian military during the panic (the word decimation being used in the literal sense, not the figurative sense. Look it up). There was also nothing about the Japanese net nerd who was so locked into the web that he didn’t realize the zombies had overrun his building. All really good stuff from the book, all missing from the audio book. I just finished and there is actually a mention in the end credits for “abridgment by”. Hey, why don’t you just bite me?

At least the character from whom we learn of the Battle of Yonkers was read by Mark Hamill. That is one Jedi Knight who can kick ass at anything he sets his Jedi Knight mind to.

To-Do List for Saturday August 29, 2015

There are a lot of things to get done today, so I figure I’d write out a to-do list to try and stay organizized.

1. Go to Dunkin Donuts to get breakfast for the Mrs.
2. Eat Munchkins. Mmmm, Dunkin Donuts chocolate munchkins.
3. Go to McKinnon’s to get dinner for the Mrs and I for both today and tomorrow. As Ned Stark always said, Winter is Coming, so I should get stuff to cook on the grill while I still can.
4. Mow the lawn for the first time in three weeks.
5. Shave! I’m seriously starting to look like a member of the 2013 World Series Champion Boston Red Sox. I look like I have a freakin’ monkey growing out of my face.
6. Put away the Poland Springs water that was delivered yesterday even though Poland Springs didn’t send us a notification that the delivery was coming, and therefore we didn’t leave our empties out for pick up. That means the garage is full to bursting with Poland Springs bottles.
7. Buy a $1400 Fender Twin Reverb amplifier and some form of distortion pedal. Possibly a Rat2 (popular with the Seattle bands from the ’90s) or a Big Muff Pie (popular with one Mr David Gilmour whose supply of awesomesauce never, ever runs out), or maybe one of the MXR models (because the last two pedals I bought were MXR and I LOVE ‘EM!)
8. Set a timer on my spiffy little Apple Watch to time how long it takes for my beloved wife Jennifer to read entry #7 and start yelling, “NO!”. hehe Love you sweetie!
9. Buy a recycle bin. I won’t go into it, but arguments over trash were a major part of why I was in such a state of mood swing yesterday. Everything’s fine now though.
10. Practice the guitar for tomorrow’s band practice. Gots to learn that piano part from that U2 song. Maybe put some new strings onto the 335 while I’m at it.
11. Cook dinner on the grill, as stated in entry #3.
12. Watch the first episode of Fear the Walking Dead one more time (this will be four, I think) in preparation for episode 2 which airs tomorrow. Someone on reddit mentioned something odd about color schemes and I need to see if I can spot it. Something about all of the scenes in the first half of the episode including something blue, and then all of the scenes toward the end including something red. As if, everything’s fine so we’ll show you a happy blue color suddenly turns to everything’s not fine anymore so we’ll show you red for danger. Probably not anything important, or even intentional, but a good excuse to watch the pilot again.
13. Sleep.

I have already completed items one through three and damn were those munchkins yummy. They were so good that I am starting to really need to get back on the weight loss plan… because I could get addicted to them and gain another 500 pounds, easily.