Author: robertjames1971

I'm wicked tall.

World Record Pace

I’m dizzy with speed and excitement.

I punched out of work at 5:31. I left the house to go to three stores at 5:40. I went to the UPS store and shipped a return item back to Amazon. I went to Home Depot and picked up an online order. I went to Best Buy and returned a laptop. I was home at 6:15.

Round trip with three store visits in 35 minutes! Holy crap! How did that happen? All three stores were on route 28 in Salem, NH. If I try to do the same trip in December it will take 5.5 hours, at least! Wow!

Sorry everyone, I just had to share this. It’s a traffic/retail miracle.

We Did Not Win

You can tell by the fact that I signed in to work this morning that we did not win a billion gajillion dollars in the Powerball lottery last night. We didn’t even win a free ticket. Oh well.

On the upside though, I think I got a little raise today. Just a little one. There isn’t a lot to go around for raises right now so anything is welcome. The usual process is that someone tells me a raise is coming and then I get a document spelling it out. Today I got the document without anyone telling me it was coming. It works for me though. It’s not much but it’s enough to keep me in sea salt and vinegar peanuts for a couple of months at least.

The 1.5 billion gajillion dollar lottery would have been preferred, but I’ll take what I can get, with a smile.

Favorite Artists

Daily writing prompt
Who are your favorite artists?
View all responses

My favorite artists are all musicians. I’ll give you a short list, okay? I think the word “art” is probably a little too pretentious given the type of music all of these folks make/made. That’s okay. I like what I like, you know? You know it when you see it and all that.

  • Rush. I was a kid in 5th grade the first time I heard Rush and they had a monumental effect on me. They rewrote my future, musically and pretty much socially. They set me on a path as it were. It was odd how as their musical directions changed over the years it always lined up perfectly with how my own musical tastes were changing. They were always right where I needed them to be.
  • Throwing Muses. Rush changed my musical outlook when I was a kid and then continuously adjusted it again and again throughout the rest of my life. Throwing Muses did the same thing to me when I was in high school. Like most high school kids I was sure that I had the world figured out, musically speaking at least, and hearing The Muses for the first time turned that entire outlook upside down and backwards and inside out. It was a monumental change. I owe this band so much.
  • Eric Clapton. I share this one with a frustrated sigh. His career has been long and varied and huge swaths of it are totally uninteresting. Also, he’s demonstrated on a couple of occasions that he is a bit of a schmuck, and that is upsetting to me. Really, he’s just a spoiled child who seems to believe everything he reads even when what he reads is idiotic and clearly untrue. Putz. Still, from the start of his professional career through his first drug fueled semi-retirement in 1971 or so his guitar playing inspired me to play guitar in a way that no one else ever did. Before I heard Cream I was curious about learning the guitar. After I heard Cream I was obsessed with the idea and HAD to learn to play guitar. Clapton did that to me.

Those are the big ones. If art is meant to inspire then those three are the biggest sources of inspiration for me. It seems too short a list though, so let’s add a few honorable mentions for luck.

  • Jeff Beck
  • Yes
  • Pink Floyd
  • Genesis
  • BB King
  • Jimmy Page
  • Albert King
  • The Pixies
  • Nirvana
  • Pearl Jam

Just to name a few.

Powerball

We’re not lottery playing people in this house. Jen and I will splurge for a ticket or two when a jackpot gets insanely huge.

Powerball is insanely huge.

We bought a couple of tickets.

We had to drive to a store tonight (a drive through, social distance like a boss) and on the ride over we planned out what we will do with our winnings. Our boat load of winnings.

I plan on calling Kirk Hammett and asking him how much he wants for Peter Green’s Les Paul.

Be Careful Out On Those Internets, Kids

I am not going to share any details because a: it’s not my info to share and, b: it’s none of your damn business.

Having said that, be careful out in the wilderness that is the internets, kiddos. It’s dangerous out there. You click the wrong link and someone scoops up your login credentials and BOOM, you’re private info is public. Worse, it happens at work and your company’s private info is public. Worse, worse, it happens to your customer and your customer’s private info is public and then you have to dive in and try to clean up the mess.

No one I know or work with was involved in such a thing, but the clean up when it happens to other people around you can be super stressful.

So be careful out there. You don’t want to go through any of this crap, and you don’t want to accidentally put your friendly neighborhood support staff through it in your place either. Yikes, bro.

Today’s Photo a Day

39/365
39/365

I only played for a few minutes this morning. I noodled on a song idea. It’s not much of anything and I don’t know if I will even do anything with it. I’m feeling a little creatively brain fried right now. Not sure why.

I’m about to punch in to work. We’re going to be at half strength today. Hopefully being Columbus Day means that most people will have the day off and we won’t have a lot of issues to deal with. There were a few things going on over the weekend that some of my staff may have been pulled into. I will get a status update on all of that shortly. Hopefully it stays quiet.

Okay then, let’s get this Monday started. Duck and cover, folks… here we go!