I don’t like Discord. I know that makes me sound old, but it’s just an AOL chat room so it’s not that I am old, it’s that I’ve been there and done that and don’t want to do it again.
The RPM Challenge forums no longer exist as they have been replaced by a Discord server. Okay. I’ll play along.
There I was, typing in a post to the random chat board, and either the app on my machine crashed or the server went down. Like… right in the middle of typing!
Okay, we have established that I don’t like Discord. Now it seems that Discord doesn’t like me either. Well screw you, Chuck!
On an unrelated note, Bellana and her roommate posted another video. They went to Belgium. Just a spur of the moment trip to Brussels. How cool is that? How cool is the EU?
Maybe I’ll share the video one of these days.
On another unrelated note, why is the last post I made last night displaying in a box? Is this post going to display in a box? Did I accidentally click a put-your-post-in-a-box button? I don’t know. Let’s publish this puppy and see what happens!
ADDENDUM: I didn’t click a put-your-post-in-a-box button, but I did post the previous update while I was about 95% asleep and I did accidentally click a stick-this-to-the-top-of-your-page checkbox. It should be fixed now.
The Bruins lost tonight. I didn’t get any music done. I’m not planning on car music tomorrow. I got a chunk of my work project done but not enough to feel comfortable.
I just want to add a quick post to mention two things that just happened because they are funny and weird and worth mentioning on a pointless blog like this.
I’ve mentioned before that I like to listen to podcasts while I work. I play them through the Apple HomePod Minis in the bedroom. Today when I tried to connect to them via Airplay they weren’t available. I asked Siri to tell me the weather and it came back saying it wasn’t connected to the internet. Our HomePods are setup through Jen’s Home app so I told her and when she gets a chance she’ll look at it.
A few minutes later, I am sitting at my desk working and suddenly, seemingly at random, Deep Purple’s Space Truckin’ comes roaring out of the HomePods. Oh yeah, it does! Come on, let’s go space truckin’ babie!
I know why it happened, but it’s just really funny that it did. Once the song was over it started playing some horrid Aerosmith song and I couldn’t get that bastard shut off fast enough. The Purple song though, that was a treat.
A few minutes after that I decided to water the plants. Literally, that’s not a urination reference. I literally watered the plants. I have a candle burning on the same table the plants sit on. As I was watering one particular plant I smelled smoke. I then saw smoke. Huh? Oh, it’s just my arm. It was over the candle and my arm hairs were singeing off. That’s all. Nothing major. No damage done… except to a few arm hairs. I can still sort of smell it though.
It’s Sunday and Jen and I are just hanging out in the office. We’re in the midst of a grande experiment to improve one facet of our existence. It’s something incredibly important that everyone deals with every day……..
Pillows.
We’re trying to up our pillow game, big time. Jen ordered some pillows the other day and we used them last night. They were very firm. Much firmer than we’ve ever used before. Jen didn’t like them. I haven’t really decided yet. Too firm? Maybe. Too firm to use? I don’t know. We are trying another set of pillows next that are a little squishier. I expect they will be Goldilox: just right.
What else is going on? I am going to have a painful week at work this week, so I’m enjoying the calm today. I’ll pay for it later. I have another day off this week too. Wednesday. That’s three consecutive Wednesdays I’ve been out of work. The other two had actual reasons. This week is just because I had to burn eight hours of vacation time in order to avoid maxing out at the end of the month. I will likely have to do a couple of days in February too, but at least I can use the RPM Challenge as my excuse.
I am a little sad today. A few weeks ago I ordered a pile of new clothes. Two t-shirts didn’t come quickly, but they finally came at the end of last week. The two shirts came from the Rush Backstage store. Yup. I’m wearing my fav band on a t-shirt. Unfortunately, the first of the two that I’ve tried on is really small. It has made me sad. I guess I am going to have to go through a weight loss surgery process in order to get smaller so the shirt will fit. I’m guessing the second band shirt is going to be small too, but I haven’t tried it on yet.
I can’t think of anything else to write about. Jen picked up a copy of NHL ’22 and I started playing it yesterday. Maybe I’ll sneak in another game tonight. I’m playing through the Spengler Cup. I have no idea how that tournament works, but I haven’t lost a game yet. I have it on the lowest difficulty level though, so if I lose a game it means I royally suck.
Okay. Ms Patches just came into the room and she’s meowing for attention. I think I’ll post this and go pet her. Bye for now.
I did it. I got up early and showered and got dressed and was all ready to grab my lappytop and jump into the car and do some effin’ car music!
“Hey Siri, how’s the weather?” he asked.
“The current temperature is seven degrees. The high today will be 19 degrees and the low will be seven degrees,” Siri replied.
Well screw that! It’s bloody cold out there! I wonder how the forecast for tomorrow morning is looking. I just looked… it’s pretty much the same as today. Crap.
On a not quite related note, the RPM Challenge website used to have a blog section and a forum and it was all replaced by a Discord channel. Discord makes me feel old. You know the stereotype about the old people who are unable or unwilling to embrace new technology? It’s not that I don’t get it, it’s just that I don’t want to. I used to use those ICR boards back in the stone age, and I used the AOL chatrooms before that. Discord feels exactly like them. So it’s not a matter of failing to embrace a new technology, it’s more a matter of not having any interest in re-embracing an ancient one. I guess. I’m trying though.
On a totally unrelated note, Rest in Peace Meat Loaf. My sister had Bat Out of Hell when it was actually current, if you can imagine a world that far in the past. I would occasionally take it for a spin when she wasn’t around.
I often start my lunch break with a visit to Google News where I just pick a handful of articles to read. I saw one today that talked about Tumblr and how, while it seems to be a dead platform, lots of younger people are starting to use it. The implication was that many of the younger people who are ignoring Facebook and Twitter are ending up there. That’s nice. I always like Tumblr, but they made the same fatal mistake that Flickr made when they let Yahoo buy them out. That mistake was, of course, letting Yahoo buy them out.
I think I had two Tumblr accounts and I am pretty sure they are both active… pretty sure. One is just a copy of this blog. Anything I post here gets cross posted there. I would tell you what the address is, but I can’t remember. I just know that when I look at this account’s dashboard there is a reference to it. The second account sometimes gets used when I work on a music project like RPM. I post daily (mostly) progress that are pretty much meaningless to anyone who isn’t me, and after a few days they all look exactly the same.
This post, however, is not about Tumblr. It’s about Facebook.
Reading that article made me ask myself how long it had been since I logged in to Facebook. Turns out it’s been 48 days. December 2, 2021. That’s nice, huh? I’ve only received one notifications email from them over that time and I just trashed it. I don’t think I ever considered my boycott to be permanent, but it’s pretty nice the way I haven’t felt any need to check in for as long as it’s been. I imagine that there is a magic number of days that the boycott will last that will fully satisfy my need to stay away and once I hit that number I won’t get pissed off at myself if I go back.
I didn’t go out for car music today. Nope. I was going to. I woke up at 6:45am (on a Saturday, you savage!) and my watch told me it was 2 degrees out. Yikes. Well… we’ll see how things look after my shower and stuff. When I was all dressed and ready to go my watch told me it was 1 degree out. Welp, maybe next time.
That’s one thing dropped from the to-do list. We are hoping to add one thing too. There will, hopefully, be a FaceTime call with Bellana today! All the way from The Netherlands where she is quarantining and probably super bored. I still haven’t decided if I want to share their YouTube video or not. I’m hoping they post things regularly so we can feel like we’re a distant part of their adventure. Fingers crossed. I probably won’t post the videos here. I don’t know. Maybe, but probably not.
In closing, yesterday I listened to a podcast that broke down the Grace Under Pressure Tour video that Rush released in 1984 or so. It brought this little masterpiece back to the front of my brain and it doesn’t show any signs of leaving any time soon.
Fear. A sort of suite. Sort of. In 1984 when Rush released the Grace Under Pressure album, the song The Enemy Within was subtitled Part One of Fear. Well what the hell did that mean? They eventually explained it to us. One of my friends in Junior High said he had figured it out, but I don’t believe him.
Fear is a three song suite-ish that includes one song each from three albums… in reverse.
Part One is The Enemy Within from Grace Under Pressure, released in 1984. Part Two is The Weapon from Signals, released in 1982. Part Three is Witch Hunt from Moving Pictures, released in 1981.
Simple, right? If I remember correctly, Neil said he numbered them in order of the hardest to write to the easiest… or was it the other way around. Damn it. I don’t remember for sure. It doesn’t matter, they were numbered based on the writing process, that’s all you need to know. I don’t recall if The Weapon and Witch Hunt were ever officially given a Fear subtitle on any subsequent release, but they might have. There was also a fourth song, Freeze from Vapor Trails, released in 2002, but they never played all four of them together. In fact, they never played Freeze live at all. They were never supposed to play Witch Hunt either. That was written and recorded as a studio only thing as there were little things that couldn’t be pulled off live with just three people at the time. As a result, this arrangement is a little different than the Moving Pictures album and that was something that Rush just didn’t do, making this version extra special. Years later, as sampling and triggering technology caught up with the band, they did do Witch Hunt as it was originally arranged. I really like this one though. It lacks the cowbell in the beginning, well most of it at least, but it adds that killer guitar solo at the end. Awesome.
Gee, I hope these videos actually play though… seems like a lot of people have posted this with the sharing options off. Yikes.
Inside the Red Head's Head 