Author: robertjames1971

I'm wicked tall.

Absolutely Gorgeous Day

Today is an absolutely gorgeous early summer Sunday in New England. It’s perfect out there right now. It will stop being perfect once the predicted thunderstorms show up, but for now it’s ideal.

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It’s time for a bird house check. There are three. Two little ones and one bigger one. One of the little ones has had a nest pretty much since the first day I hung it on a tree. I can’t tell if it’s still active or not, but it was for a while at least.

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I am very happy to report that the second little bird house also has a nest! This is the first time I have been sure that the house is in use. Or was in use. Again, I can’t tell if this is active or not.

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Finally, the bigger bird house, the nicest of the bunch, which is hanging on the front of our house is still completely unused. No sign of tenants at all. Oh well. Maybe next year.

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In closing, Robin still doesn’t have a clue what to do when she sees me outside.

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Good Morning

I wicked overslept today. I wanted to get up before 6:00, do my yogging, play some guitar, have some breakfast, then check in with work. There’s a customer going through a huge project this weekend and there is a chance I could get called in to help out. I wanted a status update to make sure I’m in the clear (I am 99% sure I won’t get called now, things are going well).

Instead I slept until after 7:30. I still did all of that stuff, I just did it hours later than expected. I also changed the litter boxes and filled up the bird feeders and am currently on my second load of laundry. It’s been an active kinda day so far.

Now that all of that is out of the way, I should be able to spend some time mixing some music and writing some lyrics for what I hope will be a huge car music tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed on that one.

Pictures:

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I put leads on two songs using my SG and then switched to my Les Paul for the third and final song. I have now run out of songs that are ready for leads. There’s only one song remaining that is ready for rhythm guitar, but I am waiting on that one. I don’t know why, but I am. I am still sticking to the May Music Project plan of only using the new King of Tone pedal. I brought my stay-at-home pedal board out of the closet the other day but I haven’t set it up yet. I will use that once the faux 50/90 starts on the 4th of July. I think. I want to put the King of Tone onto the board too, in place of whatever overdrive is currently following the Klon KTR in the chain. I think it’s the Keeley D&M Drive right now, though I hate to put that one away. I need to see how The King plays with others.

Okay, more music updates later. I think. We’ll see.

Look What I Did

It was 10:30 at night. I still had 40% of my move goal left to do. Jen was asleep so I snuck down cellar and yogged for a while. Once my move goal was closed (stand and exercise goals had been closed for many hours by then) I took a little time to recover and then…

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That’s right, kids, the guitar playing streak is alive. I only played for about 10 minutes but it counts, babie!

Drizzly Morning Car Music

I had four songs ready for me to record vocals and I just got home from recording in the car. I picked off all four songs. Sweet.

Now I have four songs ready to mix, four ready for lead guitars, eight ready for lyrics, and one still waiting on rhythm guitars. How much of that pile of stuff will I get to today? Hopefully a good chunk of it all. It’s a music kinda day today, I think.

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That Sucked

There were a number of possible titles for this post. Hills. Don’t Get Cocky. The App Crashed. The App Lied to Me. In the end I summarized them all by just going with That Sucked.

I tried to get a little creative with today’s couch to 5k thing. I varied my route a little. That was a mistake. That put my running times right onto the worst hilly spots in the neighborhood. Uphill, every time I was on a run. Yeah, that sucked. Way to be an arrogant ass, Robert. Add to that the app crashing twice as I was starting. That lead to my watch not tracking things, which lead to me trying to get the watch to work which lead to the phone not tracking anymore, though the voice over continued. That means the app doesn’t think I finished workout number three, and it doesn’t have about half of the workout’s stats, including my much varied map. Stupid app. Add to that the app telling me, as the voice over was finishing, that workout number three is the last free workout and now I have to subscribe. It didn’t tell me how much a subscription costs, but thanks a lot for the bait and switch, you lying asswipes.

I guess the upside is that I did workout number three, which is eight minutes longer than numbers one and two. Walk for three minutes, run for one, repeat eight times instead of six times. That means I closed my workout ring for the day. That’s nice. I have to do this workout again in order for it to track in the app, but I was thinking of doing that anyway because I had such a tough time with it.

Also, I visited the stone state line marker and took a picture with my phone. This thing is on the short list of things to shoot on film. Someday.

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On Call

Back in the olden days of this here blog I used to regularly complain about having to be on call for work. There were a bunch of different varieties of on call-ness and I didn’t enjoy any of them. They all stressed me out. The good part though is that they usually come with some form of compensation. That was something I could get behind, and that was why I took the on call shifts when they were available to me.

When I was promoted, almost 10 years ago, I made the decision to make the on call shifts available to my staff whenever possible. I wanted them to receive the compensation and I pledged to myself that I would only take shifts when my entire staff were unavailable. As it turns out, I haven’t had to take many on call shifts since. There was one where I was covering a customer’s catastrophic system failure and I knew I was going to be working around the clock for a whole weekend. I took that one to protect my staff. That was a, “the buck stops here” kinda thing. It was awful, but I handled it. Every other on call shift, and the pay/comp time/whatever compensation was involved went to them. I feel pretty good about that track record.

Well… looks like I am on call this weekend. Sort of. Not exactly, but close. I’ve been the go to contact for the last couple of weeks anyway. It just seems easier to have me be the off hours contact too.

Yeah… I’m starting to remember why I didn’t like being on call. Memories, am I right?