Category: Generic

Lost

I had my whole weekend planned out but now that it is here I just feel lost. I need to vote, I need to go grocery shopping, I need to carve the pumpkin I bought last week, I need to see if I can fix the fret buzz on one of my guitars (though the more I read up on possible causes and solutions the more terrified I am to start tweaking a 35 year old instrument).

I mean, my to do list is nice and full… why do I feel lost today? I was hoping a good nights sleep would straighten out my brain but that didn’t help at all. I’m sure it’s nothing and once I get the ball rolling today I will be out of this fog.

I don’t know. We’ll see. Happy Saturday to all of you, and may your personal to do list be full of things that make you happy while being easily achievable. Let’s all have a day full of completed goals, what do you say!

Irritation

It has been one of those days. Everything that has happened today has rubbed me the wrong way. Well… maybe not everything, but most things. Why? Is it because the Bruins were shut out last night? It could be. Is it because the fucking Yankees are in the World Series? It might be.

Here’s hoping the drive home will be a turning point. Granted I will have to stop for gas before I get home, but I am finally going to finish my JRR Tolkien deep dive/audio book re-read. Well… I listened to the Silmarilian (boy, was that rough) and about 15 minutes into tonight’s commute I will complete The Lord of the rings (much better, except for all the singing… ouch). Up next in my Audible queue is Stephen King’s new short story collection. That should be a nice palette cleanser after all the Middle Earth fantasy. I guess I should read The Hobbit too, for completeness, and anything else that Tolkien may have published that I have never read. Naw, let’s get into some King for a while.

Once I get home the plan is to make a quick dinner for me and the love of my life. Burgers (fried on the stove) and fries (fried in the air fryer). Then we’ll sit down in the living room and enjoy a quiet night together making fun of our clinically insane cats. As per usual.

Here’s hoping for a fun, quiet night tonight and a less stressful work day tomorrow.

Paul Di’Anno

We got some sad news from the land of British Heavy Metal from the 1980’s. Paul Di’Anno passed away.

Paul Di’Anno was the original singer in Iron Maiden. Well… original? Not sure, but he’s the singer on their first two records and their original demo and all that good stuff. He was either fired or quit or maybe a little bit of both in about 1982 or so, I think. He was replaced by Bruce Dickinson who quickly became a legend and the band exploded in a huge way after he was gone. I’ve heard the story from a bunch of different vantage points and they all are different enough that I don’t really know what happened. All I know is they were pretty big before he left and huge after.

Di’Anno was in a slew of bands after leaving Maiden. None of them were anywhere near as big, but he seems to have pretty much always been working. I think there was some jail time in his past somewhere too, and in recent years he had a bunch of health issues. He seemed to reconnect with some of his old band mates in recent years and everyone seemed happy to be in touch with him again.

At this point I will do what I always do when a public figure dies. I will make it all about me. Sorry for the narcissism.

I first heard Iron Maiden when I was in Junior High School. In seventh grade our bus driver, at the request of one of the eighth graders, would play The Number of the Beast album during our bus rides. He only ever played side two and we only ever heard the title song and Run to the Hills, but he played the cassette almost every day. It wasn’t for me. Ironically, it was Bruce Dickinson’s voice that really turned me off. I eventually came around, but at that time I was not digging the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Sorry.

Fast forward to my senior year in high school. All of my friends… all of them (I think)… were Maiden fans. I was the odd man out. Once in a while someone would force me to listen to something, and it was the then-current release, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, that almost brought me into the fold. It’s basically a prog-rock record disguised as metal. It wasn’t bad. I didn’t hate it, but as with Number of the Beast, it just wasn’t for me. Close, but not quite.

Not long after that, my soon to be college roommate Larry took one more shot. He told me that the very first Iron Maiden record had a different singer and the sound was much more raw. He put the album on and that was it. It was less grand and (dare I say it) operatic and more… punk? I think the band used to get pissed when people said they were punk-ish, but that’s what I was hearing… and that’s what I was liking. What sold me on that album was two things, really. The lack of production value (ironic since I was about to go to college to study audio engineering) and the singer. Paul Di’Anno. Bruce Dickinson is better in literally every measurable way, but I will go to the end of my days preferring Paul Di’Anno. It’s not you, Bruce, it’s me.

I devoured that first album. Then I checked out the second album, Killers. The production values went way up and the energy changed. I really liked it, but not in the same way as the first album. I found a copy of the Maiden Japan live ep and that was better. The rawness was back. I ate those three records alive for a while and eventually I started opening my tiny little brain up to some of the post-Paul Di’Anno stuff and by then I was ready to give in to it and Maiden became one of my favorite bands.

Their run of releases up to 1990 was unbeatable. I saw them for the first time in 1990, which was unfortunately when the wheels were sort of falling off the bus a little. I saw them again in 2000 when they were very much finding themselves again. I saw them a third time in 2019, a few months before the pandemic arrived, and while they are senior citizens now, they still have it. Whatever IT is, they still have it. I am going to see them for a fourth time next month. I’m looking forward to it.

And it is all thanks to Paul Di’Anno’s performance on that first album. That’s what opened the door for me. That’s what opened my brain.

Paul Di’Anno has passed away at the age of 66. Rest in Peace. Thanks for the music. Thanks for the energy. Thanks for the grrrrrrrrrrr. Most appreciated.

Question for Myself

There is a question that I am asking myself today. More like a switch statement, for my programmer friends. I am not looking for advice or opinions, I am just mulling it around in my head.

Should I go to the sugar free bakery today and get some sweet sugar free cookies to have as after dinner snacks this week?

Or, should I bake that sugar free chocolate cake mix that has been in the cupboard for a couple of months now?

Or, should I do neither and just work my way through the pile of sugar free snacks I’ve hoarded over the last month or so?

Now, for the programmers… I asked Google Gemini to write me a switch statement in C that asks those three questions. Here’s what it gave me. 

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    int choice;

    printf("Should I go to the sugar-free bakery, or should I bake a sugar-free cake,\nor should I just eat the snacks I've hoarded over the last month?\n");
    printf("Enter your choice (1 for bakery, 2 for baking, 3 for snacks): ");
    scanf("%d", &choice);

    switch (choice) {
        case 1:
            printf("Going to the sugar-free bakery seems like a good option!\n");
            break;
        case 2:
            printf("Baking a sugar-free cake at home can be a fun and rewarding experience.\n");
            break;
        case 3:
            printf("Indulging in your hoarded snacks might be tempting, but consider the nutritional value and long-term effects.\n");
            break;
        default:
            printf("Invalid choice. Please enter 1, 2, or 3.\n");
    }

    return 0;
}

Hectic Morning

I messed myself up this morning. I overslept a little and then made it worse by not getting into my morning routine for about half an hour after I got out of bed. Ooops. I’ve been all out of whack ever since.

It actually started last night around 11:00pm. I went to bed really late and didn’t fall asleep for about an hour. I made a plan to do some guitar work after finishing my morning exercise. I picked two songs from the list of things I want to re-record and listened through them to remind myself what needs to be done. Then I had a snack and went down a small youtube rabbit hole (videos about Lord of the Rings back stories). (Oooops)

Then I got a really late start and didn’t have time for any guitar. I did open a box that FedEx delivered yesterday. It had some dishes in it that came from IKEA. Almost 50% of the items in the box arrived broken. Damn it. Then I punched into work and it’s been seriously hectic so far. It’s almost 12:30 now and the morning was colored by lots of urgent issues. I actually had a pretty long to-do list for today and I haven’t gotten to any of it yet. Here’s hoping the afternoon calms down.

I had to have a snack at about 11:30 and I over did it. Now I need to wait until my stomach empties out a little (no bad issues, I am just a little too full) before I can have any lunch.

We don’t have any plans in place for the weekend yet. I am still on the fence as to whether or not a leaf peeping drive to the mountains would be worth it or not. Maybe I’ll just take Dad’s camera and a roll of black and white film out and be faux artsy around town. Maybe.

Five hours to go until the weekend. Duck and cover and get through it, folks. Good luck.