Category: Uncategorized

April Fools

Happy April Fools Day.  If I get some time today I will scour the internets looking for web site April Fools jokes.  I saw one this morning where Mashable reported that CERN had discovered The Force and that gravity was just some prankster Jedi holding us all down.  That’s pretty good.  Google is traditionally the April Fools King.  I’m looking forward to seeing what they have in store this year.

The real April Fools joke came from my phone though.  The weather channel app told me it was 25 degrees out as I was getting ready to leave for work.  That’s funny.  25 degrees on April 1st.

You realize now of course that the joke was on me… because it wasn’t a joke… it was really seven degrees below freezing on April 1st.  Winter will never end.

One More Marquee

One more Break Even picture. I didn’t do anything goofy to this one, but it’s special in it’s own way. This show was the excuse for my sister and a few friends to get my brother into the same room as the girl they wanted to fix him up with. Fast forward to today and they are married with two ridiculously awesome kids. It’s just fantastic when a plan comes together!

On a side note, the restaurant/bar no longer exists. My brother meeting his wife aside, that’s a good thing. They place was a seriously skeevy, scary, dump. If I remember correctly though, I played pretty well that night. Not my best, but well enough to make me happy. Oh, and my brother met his wife. That just makes it even better.

Forgotten Goofiness

I had forgotten that back when I was in the band Break Even I used to make really stupid little flyers to announce show that I would post on our website.

I literally have no memory of some of these.

This one is a favorite, along with the Pluto pic above.

Safe to say that when the Lizardfish gigs start happening there will be more stupidity along these lines. The only difference is they will go to Facebook where people will see them, as opposed to the old breakevenmusic.com which no one ever saw.

Happy Birthday, God!

Let us all join together to wish a happy 70th birthday to God himself, Eric Clapton! Musically speaking, every time I touch a guitar I am doing my utmost best to steal as much as I can from him… and I fail miserably every single time. For my money he is now and always will be the single greatest guitar soloist my ears have ever experienced. Happy Birthday, and many more!

I don’t think I’ve ever heard this version…

I hope this is the original studio version… I can’t actually listen right now and it’s not from a compilation I’m familiar with.

…and many, many, many more.

Something About Lions

Today is March 30, 2015.  I pulled into a parking spot at work at about 8:45.  As I stepped out of the car it started to snow (I don’t thinks those two events are actually related, it was just coincidence that they happened at the same time).

Remember that old saying about weather in March?  In like a lion, out like a lamb?

Not this year.

This year it’s in like a lion, out like a slightly warmer lion.

Spring is never going to really come again, is it.  Never.  At least The Walking Dead season ended last night.  I might be able to get a good night sleep on Sundays for a while.  Then again, there is that spin off show starting in the summer.  What happens if they put that on Sunday nights too?  Uh oh.

RPM Challenge on the Air

Portsmouth Community radio is playing music from this year’s RPM Challenge all day today.  24 hours of nothing but RPM.  How cool is that.  

Click here to listen and let me know if you hear me!  When you submit your finished album they ask you to recommend a song.  This year I recommended this one:

That doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the one they would play, and there is no guarantee they’ll play my garbage at all, but let me know if you hear it.

Video Blues

I took my camera and tripod to my step daughter’s afternoon showing of her school play. She’s the lead. It’s the last chance to get a video of the whole show. I set up the tripod, set up the camera, the chorus teacher came out on the stage for some pre-show announcements. The first announcement. No video.

SON OF A B……..

It doesn’t matter. My step daughter was AWESOME! Even more awesome than she was in the first show Thursday night. Just outstanding. Aces all around. She is so going to own Broadway one of these days. She is growing into a fantastic vocalist. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

iPhone Sadness

The iPhone 6 Plus is dead.  Long live the iPhone 6 Plus.

A while ago I had a problem with my iPhone’s headphone jack.  A little ball of lint got stuck in it and I couldn’t plug in.  I took it in for service and they pulled out some fuzz and life was good.  The next time I plugged in headphones the same thing happened.  The plug went in a little further, but nothing connected.  I vowed to go back, but months went by with nothing.

Until today!  Last night I booked a service appointment and backed up the phone on my desktop.  Today I was at the store for less than five minutes before the Jack was clean.  I asked them for a pair of headphones I could test with and the plug clicked in sweetly.  When I got to the car I plugged into the stereo and… Nothing.  The music came through the phone’s built in speaker.  I got out of the car and went back in to the store.

They don’t fix broken headphone jacks, the just replace the phone.  Sad face.  I had a few minutes to wait so I started frantically signing out of everything.  iCloud first, then my work email, then as much as I could get to.  They brought out a new phone and swapped the SIM card (never seen them do that before), and let me paranoiacly test the headphones.  Then off I went.

Now I’m updating the OS to iOS 8.2 so that I can restore from last night’s back up.

The moral of the story?  Always keep an up to date back up of your devices!