I played in a golf scramble today at The Legends at Orange Lake sponsored by Universal Studios and RCI. On one particular par 4, we were getting ready to hit our 2nd shot from about 160 yards out. A group fron the next fairway over came over and had to play their ball out of our fairway. They were about 15 feet behind us and let us hit first. I absolutely nailed my shot to within about 6 feet from the cup. One of the guys in the other group said "Nice shot, man." I said "thanks" as we drove to the green.
As we're riding away, two guys in my group chuckled and informed me that I had just been complimented by Darryl Talley. Yes - Mr. 4 Super Bowls, 2 Pro Bowls Darryl Talley.
As someone that never sees (or recognizes) famous people, this was pretty cool. Although may have been cooler had I known who he was at the time of the compliment. Oh well...
I write this blog entry for myself for future reference and possibly others that experience these problems.
Problem #1 - Lexicon Alpha USB Interface stopped working
I got a Lexicon Alpha USB interface in December that came with Cubase LE 4. The other night it stopped working. I think the USB cable had become un-plugged or something. Cubase wouldn't recognize the Lexicon as an input and was playing the output through my pc speakers instead of the Alpha. I fiddled with the "Sounds and Audio Devices" in the Control Panel to no avail. I did a bunch of other time-wasting, non-productive things that I will spare you of here.
Anyway, here's how I fixed it (with the help of the Alpha Install Guide):
Go to Devices, Device Setup, make sure everything is set as follows:
Problem #2 - Annoying Quick Time message every time I opened iTunes, Cubase This message in particular:
Some of your QuickTime software is out of date. You can fix this problem by updating to the latest version.I would then dutifully click "Do It Now" and get the following:
Information received from the QuickTime server is invalid. Please try again later.Thanks to jonclarkX on this Apple Support Forum Thread:
...just went through my whole computer searching for all quicktime and iTunes files that were left behind. Be sure to check your C: > Windows > System32 folder for ANY and ALL QuickTime files. The files we found that caused the error were hidden in a filed titled "quicktime" in the System32 folder. Make sure you delete it, uninstall all iTunes and QuickTime programs (including Apple Software Update and Apple Mobile Device Support) from the Control Panel, and reinstall the latest files for iTunes and QuickTime and the error should go away.
(Alternate Title: I Hereby Nominate Billy Bob Thornton Tool Of The Year)
Since taking a pay cut a few months ago, I am (among other things) working a side job at night as a home-based call center sales agent. It's an OK gig and it allows me to do freelance web work between calls.
There are a series of certifications to go through after being hired. Then you can sort of pick and choose various products or product types to sell. You have to complete online courses for these as well.
So it's been going pretty well. I sell fitness products, various makeup and hairstyle products. I've sold commemorative Obama coins, subscriptions to NewsMax (opposite of Obama), garden herbs, and various other things.
Their call type distribution takes closing percentage into account and routes calls to agents based on how well they sell a certain type of product.
Several weeks ago, I got about halfway through an "adult" products certification and changed my mind and bailed out before I completed it. Only apparently they didn't process my bailout.
About 2 weeks ago, I started receiving calls for a certain male enhancement product and sold about 4 of the first 5 calls. (Admittedly, it's a great offer if you're in the market for that kind of thing. For $7.99 you get to try the pills for 14 days AND you get 2 XXX DVDs. And there's another "gift" that I will not mention here.)
So now I get 2-3 of these calls per night. Luckily I haven't gotten any heavy-breathing pervs yet - they've all been genuinely interested in the product. But still......
I need to get certified for the P90-X. That program is blowing up.
I just launched a website for my in-laws. They are selling all-natural pet products. If you have pets and would like to buy any of these, I can get you a deal. Leave a comment or email me at kingfresh at gmail dot com.
HeavenSentNaturalPetProducts.com
We've been selling these products on eBay and getting good feedback from buyers.
Here are some of the more popular products:
- Flea-Free Food Supplement - ...added to your pet's water or food that is comprised from garlic and vinegar. For just pennies a day your pet will be flea-free without poisons.
- Fleas-Away Carpet Treatment - Rids your carpet of fleas as well as roaches and other insects.
- Natural Yard and Garden Spray - Effective at eliminating fleas, ants, flies, aphids, and ticks.
- Pet Sponge - Effectively removes excess fur from most surfaces.
- Tick Key - Safely, effectively, and painlessly remove ticks.
- Fly-Free Food Supplement - Formulated for large animals, goats and sheep, as well as zoos.
Had a great jam session Saturday night with Bart, Juan, and Jamie. Jamie just hit the big 4-0 and threw a party. We had a great time.
Funny thing - as much as I've been playing the guitar lately, my lead playing absolutely sucked it for the first 3-4 songs. Ghost-note city. Cringe-inducing garbage playing. Then I settled in. Man I was honestly getting a little freaked out.
We ran through some old stand-by's and even went through some never-played tunes that sounded pretty decent. At this point we only get together about once per year, but it always blows me away how tight we are. Now that everyone's kids are getting a little bigger hopefully we can get together a bit more often.
Here are the songs we jammed:
- Foo Fighters - No Way Out
- Soundgarden - Outshined
- Pearl Jam - Rearview Mirror
- Temple Of The Dog - Say Hello 2 Heaven
- Ozzy - Crazy Train
- Guns-n-Roses - Welcome To The Jungle
- Guns-n-Roses - It's So Easy
- Alice in Chains - Man In The Box
- Alice in Chains - It Ain't Like That
- Golden Earring - Radar Love
- Great White - Rock Me
- Van Halen - Unchained
- Police - Roxanne
- Judas Priest - The Hellion / Electric Eye
- .38 Special - Hold On Loosely
- Metallica - Enter Sandman
- Iron Maiden - The Trooper
- Iron Maiden - Killers
- Iron Maiden - Hallowed Be Thy Name
- Heart - Barracuda
- Ratt - Lay It Down
I've already nominated Juan to host the next jam for his 40th next month.
I recorded a song as part of Twestival:
Twestival.fm - Twitter does Live AidImogen Heap donated vocal tracks from a song she recorded but never released. They invited artists to re-mix her song. You can hear all the entries here.
On 12 February 2009, 200+ cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals bringing together local Twitter communities for an evening of fun as well as raising money and awareness for charity: water...
-Twestival website
This was by far the most fun I've ever had recording a song. It really felt like I was working with Imogen Heap.
An old friend of mine requested a playlist of 80's Metal songs on Facebook. I decided to limit one song per band because I make up dumb arbitrary rules like that.
Here's my list (in alpha order):
- Black n Blue - Miss Mystery
- Bon Jovi - In and Out of Love
- Bullet Boys - Smooth Up In Ya
- Cinderella - Somebody Save Me
- Dangerous Toys - Teasin' Pleasin'
- Def Leppard - Let it Go
- Dokken - In My Dreams
- Europe - Rock The Night
- Faster Pussycat - Bathroom Wall
- Fastway - Say What You Will
- Great White - Rock Me
- Guns N Roses - My Michelle
- Helix - Rock You
- Keel - Back to the City
- Krokus - Eat The Rich
- L.A. Guns - Never Enough
- Loudness - Crazy Nights
- Motley Crue - Girls Girls Girls
- Night Ranger - Don't Tell Me You Love Me
- Poison - Nothin' But A Good Time
- Ratt - Wanted Man
- Scorpions - Blackout
- Skid Row - I Remember You
- Slaughter - Up All Night
- Steelheart - I'll Never Let You Go
- Stryper - Free
- Tesla - Modern Day Cowboy
- Tora Tora - Walkin' Shoes
- Twisted Sister - You Can't Stop Rock 'n' Roll
- W.A.S.P. - Wild Child
- Warrant - Uncle Tom's Cabin
- White Lion - Little Fighter
- Whitesnake - Slide It In
- Winger - Seventeen
- XYZ – Inside Out
- Y&T - Summertime Girls
Google released a free Ajax-based slideshow. I wrestled with that thing for about 45 minutes. My images were super blurry and small. After poking around, I figured out the problem. This was written as an RSS Feed handler so by default it brings over images as thumbnails. So, assuming you're using an RSS feed to "feed" this, the solution is simple. To correct this, you need to grab the gfslideshow.js file, store it locally and change line 48:
GFslideShow.MRSS_THUMBNAIL_TAG = "thumbnail";to:
GFslideShow.MRSS_THUMBNAIL_TAG = "content";That's it.
I built the slideshow for this client: Russian Ballet of Orlando.
My buddy Eric Fetter is now specializing in Bankruptcy Law.
It goes without saying that YYZ is a musical masterpiece. Here are five great YYZ YouTubes:
1) 11 year old girl plays it on some wack-a-doo organ thing:
2) Father and 16 year-old son play along to a basic MIDI track:
3) Some dude playing every part (not simultaneously obviously) - Whoa:
4) Geddy, Alex and Taylor Hawkins from the Foo Fighters:
5) The masters themselves:
I have a Twitter account. You can follow me if you'd like. It's kind of fun finding others that "Tweet" things of interest. If you like it, I recommend TweetDeck, as the Twitter.com version gets messy kind of fast if you follow a lot of people.
I have noticed a fair amount of spamming going on. I get random marketing people/companies following me that are wanting me to follow them and increase their exposure.
If you join Twitter, I recommend following Twetiquette for witty rules of etiquette.
Getting to the point: A "Tweet" can only be 140 characters, so it's a lot easier to write "Tweets" than blog entries. So I update my Twitter a lot more often than this blog. Then again, I publish my Tweets at the top of this blog, so I can claim I update my blog frequently.
Never mind...
I finished my first song using my new studio set-up.
I went on another internet binge. Joined a bunch of social websites. Added Twitter to this dumb website. You get the idea.
Here's a rundown of my recent internet indulgences:
- FriendFeed
- Kompoz - My first audition was a bass track for this jazz-funk song. My track got accepted but then a real bass player showed up and blew mine out of the water. Oh well.
- AudioMicro - a stock music site like AudioJungle. I'm waiting for them to respond to my request for FTP access.
- Indomite - a collaborative site for musicians where you'll supposedly be able to upload and mix your tracks online. It's not out yet, but you get free sequencing software for signing up for beta.
- Buying / Watching "Z Rock" on iTunes, then watching via Apple TV. (I am the exact demographic for Z Rock. Actually, maybe a little old, but you get what I'm sayin')
- Created a WordPress blog for the team at work
- Subscribed to about 8 new RSS feeds
A nice non-web indulgence is my Lexicon ALPHA digital audio workstation. I've been in the dark ages with a Fostex MR-8 for several years now. I just got the Lexicon up and running tonight and it is teh sweetness.
All of this is a nice distraction to the horrendous situation at work. The company has now laid off like 4,000 out of 10,000 people. (Knock on wood) I'm good for now, but who knows what lies around the corner.
I recently joined Kompoz, a music collaboration site.
While downloading a guy's track to my Fostex MR-8, the Fostex Wav Manager kept giving me this "wav file not acceptable!" message. After poking around the internets a little bit, I found the problem: You can't import a stereo track into the MR-8. Audacity is the (freeware) program I use to mix my music.
Solution: I opened the track in Audacity, set it to Mono by clicking on the track name and selecting "Mono". Then I exported as Wav. Voila - problem solved.
(Problems like this will hopefully soon be solved when I convert over to a real DAW using the Lexicon Alpha USB Audio Interface with Cubase LE+ I am getting for Christmas. Woot.
This year Lester requested "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy". The main melody of this piece lends itself well to a heavy-rock style guitar. You get bonus points if you can identify the alternate melody starting at 1:15.
Hope you enjoy:
We recently got a new PC and I took the painstaking process of moving my iTunes library from the old machine to the new. Wow. There is a lot of crap information floating around the internets on how to do this. Some especially crap information on Apple's website. Specifically - ignore this article: How to use your iPod to move your music to a new computer. I inexplicably referenced that article here back in May '05. WTF.
Anyway, here's some things I learned in this process:
- Here's how you move your songs over (without buying software):
- Plug your ipod into the new machine
- If iTunes starts up, do nothing.
- Go to "My Computer" and find your iPod.
- Go to "Tools", "Folder Options", "View" and make sure "Show hidden files and folders is selected.
- Create a new folder and copy all your iPod folders into it.
- Go into iTunes and import all those folders. For some reason I could only do 18 songs at a time.
- The easiest way to export a read-able file of your library is to do a Ctrl-a to select all, then Ctrl-c to copy to clipboard. Then paste into Excel or Open Office Calc. I went through several painful exercises in futility before discovering this should've-been-obvious solution.
- When comparing your old library song count to your new library song count, take un-checked songs into consideration. I spent a long time (don't ask) trying to figure out which songs I missed because my old library has 4,927 songs and the new one has 4,805. I had 122 un-checked in my old library.
So in the midst of Layout-Mania at work, I have been given new responsibilities. This is good for two reasons:
- Job Security
- I actually really enjoy my new responsibility: Managing the Internet Marketing team for our division.
So in addition to that, I've been trying to scare up some freelance web programming/design work to generate some much needed $. I took one pay cut and may be taking another.
Happy Birthday Randy!
Emily is in the 2nd grade. Her class talked about the election today. One of her little friends said "If you vote for Obama, girls will have to marry other girls". Kind of an odd thing for a second grader to say. Most likely means her parent(s) either told her that or she overheard her parents say it. Either way, classy people there. Maybe that's an email forward going around I just haven't received yet. It's about as credible as most I've seen.
Batman v Penguin in a political debate. Classic. And Adam West not ever winning an Oscar is one of the great injustices of our time.
Tuesdays are recycling pick-up days in my neighborhood. The recycling truck generally comes between 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. Starting about a month ago, every Tuesday around 8:45 a.m. some dude driving a pickup pulling a trailer comes through and picks through everyone's bins for (I believe) glass items.
The first time I noticed this I was walking out the front door. Upon seeing me, he skipped my house.
I don't like this. I realize that it is basically garbage that has no value to me that he is picking through, but it still gives me the creeps for some reason.
I may hide in the hedge one Tuesday and spring out and confront him and find out exactly what sinister deeds he is really up to.
Here are some acceptable responses that would get my blessing:
- "Oh Hi there! I hope it's no inconvenience to you but I recycle glass bottles and donate the proceeds to homeless families."
- "Oh Hi there! I hope it's no inconvenience to you but I am collecting glass to melt down to build a glass sculpture for the 'Make-A-Wish' kids down at the hospital."
- "Oh Hi there! I hope it's no inconvenience to you but I am recycling glass so I can go and buy some booze."
"According to numerous reports, Microsoft has decided to cancel its controversial series of ads featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates after releasing only two ads."Yikes. I don't know if I would have tried to compete on a comedic level with Apple.
-ReaWriteWeb: Not Funny: Microsoft Cancels Seinfeld Ads
In case you haven't seen them, #1:
And #2:
I report, You decide. I have decided that these ads are kind of funny and un-deserving of the apparent tidal wave of negative press. A lot of the negativity is due to people loving to hate anything Microsoft. And I like to bag on them at any opportunity myself.
And apropos of nothing, here's a great live Creed video. I take back every snarky comment I ever made about them. (Just watch it. Trust me.)
