We Need a Plan – Follow Up

On Sunday I wrote a post about trying to form a plan for moving forward with my band. I wrote out what I thought we might do to find a new singer and hold auditions and all of that fun stuff. I said I was going to send it to the other two guys in the band and that I would probably do it some time on Monday… then I immediately sent them what I had written. It wasn’t the next day, it was the next minute.

Both Mike the Bass Player and Kevin the Drummer agreed with all of it. The first of our singer-audition-preparation-practice will be a week from Sunday. One week after Easter. Over the intervening week and a half I’ll get the conversation started regarding which songs we should work on. I want at least five and at most 10. Enough to give potential new singers something to work with, but not enough to overwhelm us as we try to shake the rust off. We should try and be diverse in singing styles but I am thinking we should stay away from Bon Scott. Something about Greg the Former Singer allowed him to handle Bon Scott era AC/DC while most normal humans probably couldn’t deal with that high pitched screechiness. Greg didn’t sound like Bon Scott at all, yet somehow he could do it. Let’s not ask any potential new singers to go there. Okay… maybe we brush up one song just in case someone is feeling ambitious.

We also need to figure out the P.A. situation. We had a little one that was barely powerful enough to get a voice loud enough to be heard over the drums. That little dinky P.A. thing was replaced by something Greg bought. We don’t have that anymore because… ya know… it is Greg’s, not ours. Hopefully the little dinky thing still works.

So the ball will start rolling again in 12 days. I’ll likely share every single thought the three of us have as we work toward the next step. You know how it is for oversharing nerds like me.

Technology IS My Job

Daily writing prompt
How has technology changed your job?
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This is a hard question to answer because technology sort of is my job. Mostly. Kind of.

I work for a software company. We make information systems for hospitals (mostly). I won’t say that we’re on the cutting edge, but we try to stay up to date with the latest and the greatest. Sometimes it takes a while to get there, but we get there.

There have been plenty of technological advancements over the course of my almost 20 years here. Most of them have been internal as most of our systems are proprietary. As new ideas in the industry come along we try them on for size. Sometimes we make use of them, sometimes we give them a miss. It all depends on what those new ideas can do for our customers and our systems.

So I would say that changes in technology change the way we do things here, but nothing really turns things upside down on us. We are a tech company. Changes in tech are what we do.

Sorry I couldn’t give you a more exciting answer, but what can you do, right?

Dad’s Appointment is Done

Nothing Earth shattering. A plan of action that is more or less the same plan of action we already had, just with mini-tweaks in place. No actual changes in the care plan. We have a follow up mid-April though, so we’ll see.

He’s not in trouble or anything, just a nagging thing that doesn’t seem to want to go away but will if he’s a good patient. I’m not sharing anything beyond that.

Starting to Get Nervous

The nervousness is creeping up on me.

No details will be forthcoming, but we have an appointment with my father’s doctor today. It will be Dad, the doctor, my brother, my sister, and me. There is a potential for some difficult conversation about my father’s care going forward. There isn’t anything wrong right now, but it’s just day to day stuff that might need to be adjusted, and those adjustments might lead to some tough talk.

The appointment is about 2.5 hours from now. I have some errands to run (I might share the source of those later because it’s a “funny” story) and then I have to go and pick up my dad.

Stay calm, Robert. It will be okay.

Nope

Daily writing prompt
How often do you say “no” to things that would interfere with your goals?
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No is a hard word to say. I should learn to say it once in a while.

I’m not what you’d call a people person. I rarely get where they are coming from. I still want to be helpful though. I still want to make things easier for these weird people that I don’t understand. That makes saying no to them tough to do.

It is so tough to do that I rarely bring myself to do it. At work, in personal life situation. I’m rarely able to just say no. That doesn’t mean I don’t do it because sometimes I do. That is when the guilt takes over. I say no to someone about something and then I feel terrible about it for ages.

Saying no sucks, even when it is clearly the right thing to do.

How About a New Mix

Hey, I mixed one of the songs that I put the vocals onto yesterday and the lead guitars onto today. It’s a song from the RPM Challenge a few years ago that is now part of The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project, aka Quarantine Tunes Volume Seven.

I’m not sold on the mix, but when am I ever sold on something I’ve mixed?