Archive for 2003

We’re back home now.  Everything’s fine and Elsa didn’t shit or piss on anything while we were gone, whoo-hoo!  It was a nice relaxing trip.  John’s brother-in-law Pete (son of Jno) took us to Guitar Center yesterday and I got me a little keyboard, an Oxygen 8. It’s bigger than what I wanted… almost as big as my old blue SH-101, but it’s a MIDI controller only, no sounds of its own.  I had a few hours last night and this morning to try to get it working with the notation software I just bought.  It took me way too long to figure it out!!

Read the rest of this entry »

I just found out about the shuttle being lost.  God!!  I’m glad I didn’t see it live on TV the way I did with the Challenger explosion.  That’s been fucking with me ever since.

The other night I registered the Virtual Singer plugin for Harmony Assistant, so now I can compose Pete Drake-y vocal parts without even recording ‘em.  I also ordered the high-quality sounds CD; the default sounds are kinda crummy even for demo purposes.  My obsession now is to find a tiny MIDI keyboard that’ll hook up to my computer, so I can control the software that way instead of trying to do it with the mouse-pointer and "virtual keyboard".  I want something pocket-sized, like the old Casiotone toys ("Pocket Calculator"?), but it needs MIDI, which of course those things never had.  I’m trying to find something like that on the web, but they’re all so huge.  Definitely not pocket-sized.

Read the rest of this entry »

I just bought this music-composition software called Harmony Assistant.  I’m waiting very impatiently for the reg-code to arrive in my e-mail.  I downloaded it this morning and started playing with it, and got sucked into it right away.  I spent practically all day with it, and got frustrated when I realized the demo version won’t let you save more than two parts.  Can’t wait to get the reg-code so I can unlock all the features and really learn how to use it!  I’m hoping it will inspire me to finish some new songs… god knows I’d better if I want to keep on claiming to be a musician.  I know at least it’ll help me get my 5000 song-fragments more organized, and that can’t hurt.

I think the very best mystery songs are the ones I rip from my own vinyl collection.  I was lazy last week and posted a song I’d gotten off the internet somewhere, probably back in the Napster days.  It was "Huggin’ and Chalkin’" by Hoagy Carmichael.  An exhibition of terribly poor taste, and this week’s song isn’t much better.  But I shan’t be talking about that until next week.  :-)

Shit, I can’t get that song out of my head!!  Must think about my antidote song instead.  "You can dance if you wanna…"

John was wondering aloud why my site’s been "off the air" (his words) for the weekend.  I dunno!  I blog when I blog.  There wasn’t much to talk about anyhow… it’s been cold as hell so I don’t wanna go anywhere.  John’s two ex-bosses are coming over tonight for a little TV party; he’s making lasagna.  We’ve been doing a lot of cleaning around here, you’d think our parents were coming over or something.  I don’t think we have anything to worry about but it’s always good to have an excuse to straighten the place up.

Read the rest of this entry »

I used to follow All My Children for a few years in the late 80s / early 90s, and oh dear, now I’m hooked again.  ‘Cuz when we got TiVo, I decided to try watching it for a few days to see if I could possibly understand what was going on.  I set up a season-pass thingy and figured I would delete it soon after.  But I didn’t delete it, I’ve watched every show for a few weeks now and it’s making enough sense that I keep watching.  I am really confused about all these characters though.  There are some characters I remember and lots that I don’t.  Remember back in the nineties when Erica found out that her father was a circus clown?  Heheh.

Read the rest of this entry »

I posted a new Mystery Song. Last week’s song was "A Thing Call The Jones" (sic), a funky jam by Chico & Buddy, and I certainly hope you enjoyed it.  I don’t even have the vinyl; I had to rip it off an old mix cassette.

Holovision!  Just like TV, but in 3-D.  Oh, somebody’s probably thought of that already… they’ll probably put one on the market a month from now.

The new version of URL Manager Pro is sweet. The author fixed a bug that was annoying me a lot, a bug that would cause the titles of dragged-in URLs to be lost.  He also got it working with Chimera awhile back, and now it works in Safari too, inasmuch as that’s possible.  Safari doesn’t yet support the Shared Menus protocol, so it’s a hack, but hopefully that’ll change soon.  There’s so much about Safari not to like.  Topping my personal bitch-list are: (1) no tabbed browsing; (2) no bookmarks subscription; (3) no password manager.

Read the rest of this entry »

I added myself to Syndic8.com and I don’t know why!

I’ve been using AppleWorks to catalog my videotapes and DVDs.  I made a really detailed database and some nice layouts to go with it; I even had an image field for the covers and screenshots.  I catalogued about 85 tapes full of stuff, and then suddenly the database got corrupted or something, so it keeps crashing on me!  There were about 500 records in the db, and there’s a certain record in there that can’t be viewed, it causes a crash every time.  I’ve tried everything, the only apparent option is to rebuild the database without using the pictures, I guess.  I can only assume it’s the pictures that are choking it up.  Ugh.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been playing with the style sheet for the site, but I keep getting distracted and having to walk away from it.  I know everything looks funny, but at least I’m learning.  Learning how to mangle my site in fresh new ways every day!

I’m going to let John tell this story himself, but… he had a good day today.  Weird, but good!  Am I allowed to tell?  He was on the phone blabbing about it to half the world tonight, so I guess it’s okay.  Well, they want him back at his old job.  He’s starting again on Monday.  Now I really will shut up and let him tell the story the way he wants to!  This is my damn blog, so how do I feel about it?  I’m glad.  He basically got paid to sit around the house faxing his resume for a few weeks, it’s hilarious!  I had a blast with him being home, and I’m sorry he has to go back to work, but I’m glad he won’t have to worry about the job search now.  We got a lot of cooking done, did a lot of dishes and laundry, etc. etc.  He’s very good to hang out with, even (especially?) during apparently difficult circumstances.  But it was all a dream this time, Johnny!  :-)

I’m watching the launch of the space shuttle Columbia right now on the news channel.  These things always freak me out a little.  Just can’t forget seeing the Challenger blow up on live TV, even though that was what, seventeen years ago?

You can go here to find out when the next launch is gonna be.