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RPM Progress Report

I don’t know what to make of this.

I’ve got six songs in the works.  I’m still thinking I will write and record everything on the iPad, but I still haven’t tried plugging the guitar or mic into it yet.  It all kinda hinges on that little test.

I have Monday 2/20 off for a holiday.  I took Tuesday 2/21 off too with the plan of having two full days to myself to do nothing but music.  Now I find out one of the kids has a school function on Friday the 17th so I have to take that day off too, which means I will have part of that day at home to work on the project as well.

The songs are coming (so far).  I have time open to seriously crank things out.

But I am still not feeling this at all.  It’s all forced.  None of the music is sticking with me.  As soon as I stop working on something it’s gone from my brain entirely.  There’s no emotion involved at all.  It’s all paint by numbers.  There is no inspiration anywhere.  I’m going through the motions.  It’s all a little depressing.

I’m not going to stop though.  Not yet at least.  I’ve never finished one of these damn projects on time.  It’d be a shame if this turd is the one that finally gets in by the deadline, but it is still a goal I want to meet.

I’ll keep pluggin’.

Music Videos

This is OK Go’s new video. 

…and we thought Peter Gabriel’s videos were cool.

The really sad part about this is that these guys do this while I am struggling trying to write 35 minutes of throw away crap.  I feel pretty inferior right now.

Enjoy

E-Commerce

There are some things that are just made for shopping online.  Music, movies, toys, gadgets, stuff like that.  Stuff that you don’t necessarily need to see or hold in your hands before you buy it.  Hey, {insert band name here} has a new record out?  I think I’ll buy the CD… pop on over to amazon.com and boom, the new CD is coming in the mail.

Some things I would really think twice before buying online.  Food.  When I want to cook some burgers on the grill I’m not going to order a box of patties online, I’m going to the supermarket.  Pets.  I can’t imagine adopting a new cat without getting to meet it in person first.

Other things are sort of hit or miss.  Clothing.  I don’t know what to think when it comes to buying clothes online.  T-shirts are one thing, I would buy up at least 75% of thinkgeek.com’s t-shirt selection if I had the means.  Clothes for work though?  I hesitate.  Another good example is a winter jacket.  That’s something I want to be able to test drive a little before I buy it.  I at least want to put it on and see how warm it feels.

What about shoes?  My feet are hard to fit.  They are ridonkulously giguntic to be exact.  (See what I did there?  I’m hip.  I’m with it.  Insert image of Dr Evil trying to impress his son Scott with a lame attempt at dancing the macarena here.  How the hell do you spell macarena, anyway?)  I go to shoe stores and they have thousands of pairs of shoes for sale and maybe one or two will come close to fitting me, and generally they are marked up so high that if I had a normal person’s feet I could buy two or three pairs for the price of the one huge pair.

So this morning I bit the proverbial bullet and bought a pair of shoes online.  Size 15W, which is the wrong size but I couldn’t find anything useable in size 14WW which is what I need.  We’ll see how they feel when I get them in 2-7 days.  Hopefully they fit well enough and I can stop wearing the shoes I have on right now.  The shoes with holes right through the soles that have no more cushion because the cushion has disintegrated over the last six or so years that I’ve been wearing them.

Wish my feet luck.

Birthday!

Today is my wife’s birthday!  Everyone wish my sweet Jen a happy birthday!

And a 1, and a 2, and a 1, 2, 3…

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Jenny the love of my life the woman of my dreams my wife whom I love more than words can express,
Happy Birthday to you!

I had the weirdest night last night.  I was on call so I was trying to decide whether or not I should try to sleep or stay up in case the phone rang.  I was just about to call it a night at about 11:00pm when my nose started bleeding.  Urgh.  When I was a kid that happened all the time.  Now it’s pretty rare, but it has happened to me a couple of times over the past two or three months or so.  So I stop the bleeding (it didn’t take much) and clean myself up and crawl into bed.  About an hour and a half later I woke up.  I had the hiccups.  The hiccups woke me up.  Urgh.  I get a drink, stop the hiccups, and go back to sleep.  Three hours later I woke up with a leg cramp.  I jump out of bed and walk it off.  As I’m walking it off I started to hiccup again.  Urgh.  Fix the leg cramp, stop the hiccups, go back to sleep.  Then two hours later the worst thing happened.  The alarm clock went off.  DAMN!

But, when I got up I got to wish my love a happy birthday, so that wasn’t all that bad.

Happy Birthday, Jen!  I love you!

RPM Challenge Update: Day Six

File this RPM Challenge update under motivation, or the complete and utter lack thereof.

The clock struck midnight on February 1st and I went to sleep.  I was so geared up for this as January was coming to a close, but as soon as it was time to start working I lost 99% of my interest.

Still, I wasn’t ready to give up so instead of writing on my guitar before work I forced myself to play with GarageBand on my iPad before bed.  It’s 2/6 and I currently have 3 ideas sort of roughed out.  That keeps me on pace for FAWM, but there is so much work to do to finish what little I’ve started, never mind the mountain that hasn’t been started yet.

But as of about half an hour ago I officially altered my focus for this year.  Maybe that will motivate me.  I just bought a 1/4″ input for my iPad.  This is now a 100% iPad project.  Well, maybe not 100%… I just remembered a little noodle I have on my iPhone.  I can use the input to take the mono out from my board which will allow me to record some vocals with a little real compression.  I can use my Line6 Pod for the guitar.

I am still lacking in drive, but at least there’s a plan of action now.  If I finish on time I’ll dedicate the final package to Steve Jobs.

Games

The big game ended last night exactly the way I wanted it to.  The Bruins spanked the Capitals 4-1.  Let us hope that this win gets them out of the slump they’ve been in.  How about running off another 10 or so wins in a row?  That would feel good right about now.

Of course I’m kidding about the whole Big Game thing.  The Pats blew it last night.  On the last drive of the game, with the Patriots down by four, Pats receivers dropped passes twice.  One of them was a tough play but the receiver still got both of his hands on the ball.  The other was a perfect pass that hit the receiver square in the hands and he just dropped it.  Given that, ask yourself this question:  If the game had been fixed, would you be able to tell?  After the second dropped pass I turned to my wife and said that the game was fixed.  It probably wasn’t, but it sure seemed coincidental that two receivers muffed two passes (one of which was perfect) that hit them in the hands on the final drive of the game when a touchdown would have won it.  Never mind taking a safety on your first offensive play of the game.

The good news is, now that football is over, the sports media juggernaut that exists in Boston can turn it’s (almost) full attention to the Bruins.  The Celtics are playing too, but expectations are brutally low.  The Bruins, however, are still the Boston sports media darlings.  Let us put the focus where it belongs!

The other good news about football being over is that spring training is right around the corner.  Red Sox truck day is in six days, and pitchers and catchers report in less than two weeks.  We can then start with the whole redemption of last year’s epic collapse… although we have to deal with that Valentine clown while we do it.  Urgh.

Go Bruins
Go Red Sox
What the hell, Go Celtics
Go Bruins!