Friday

The rain continues. Yesterday I forgot my umbrella and got drenched walking into the office from my parking garage. More of a drizzle right now and it’s supposed to taper off and be nice this weekend.

We’re having our firewood delivered this afternoon. Last night I cleaned out our garage and made room for them to stack it. Also, the replacement valve cover for Pauline’s car arrived last night. What would have cost me over 100 dollars from Volvo I was able to purchase for ten bucks on eBay. Hopefully this weekend I’ll be able to finally change the spark plugs. I thought about working on them last night but with my luck something else would have gotten screwed up and then Pauline would be without a car today.

The Red Sox are playing the Yankees this weekend and I couldn’t possibly care any less. How sad is that?

Tuesday

Well after week one I’m 1-2 in my three fantasy football leagues. Some superior coaching for sure. It was just a wacky week, like the first week of the season always is. Teams are still trying to figure out how they’re going to play. Hopefully my players will step up more for week 2.

Hayley is learning to count to 100 this year in pre-K so she wanted to plant 100 daffodils in the yard. Planted the first 40 last night.

Called and ordered firewood for the winter last night as well. Going to pay and have them stack it. I stacked it twice last winter (had 2 orders) and with my back the way it is, it’s worth the extra money to let someone else do the work. Hopefully this wood will be good and it will last us most of the winter. Last winter was the first winter with our woodstove and we burned through the first delivery of wood really quickly. I think this was partly due to the quality of the wood (not using them again) and partly due to operator error. We figured out how to use the stove more efficiently and the 2nd batch of wood lasted a lot longer (we still have almost 1 facecord left). The total delivery and stacking cost for the wood is $450. If that amounts to our total heating bill for the winter I’ll be happy. Prior to getting the stove, we were paying more than $400 per month for gas heat.

Presenting… Dark Mountain Studios STUDIO B!

Thoughts of buying the MacBook are on hold for now due to software/hardware compatibility issues. So plan B: I brought our desktop, my PODxt and keyboard down into the basement. The desktop has a locking cover so the kids can’t get into it and my keyboard can be safely stored in the closet. I just hooked the monitor, mouse & keyboard from the kids’ computer (in the basement) up to my recording desktop and within 5 minutes I was up and running. This probably won’t be a bad situation as I can record as long as I want in the basement without making any noise to wake the kids.

Reinstalled Trilogy as I broke the data bindings when I re-lettered one of our hard drives. Once that was reinstalled I spent some time just making noise (getting reacquainted with my studio gear after several months) and then worked on about 48 bars of Black Light. This song has changed from a slow synth-laden piece into its current form, which is a 140bpm acid-swing type piano piece. Enjoying what is coming so far. I think what I’m going to do is try and stitch together a complete performance of the song and then go back in and fix sections.

Various Computer-Related Stuff

I installed Internet Explorer 7 RC1 at home and at work this week. At home, it works fantastic, while at work it is slow as a dog and periodically crashes. Switching back to Firefox at work makes web surfing much more enjoyable and reliable.

Been doing a little homework about the MacBook Pro. This, like all of Apple’s new offerings, runs on the Intel Core Duo processor, which has received a lot of critical praise. The problem is some of my own recording software (Cubase SX namely) does not run on Intel based Macs. Steinberg has stated that the new version (version 4… I’m running version 1.05) due out in Q4 2006 will run on the Intel based Mac systems, but they do not plan on making previous versions available. I could run Cubase using BootCamp so that it runs on Windows XP, but that pretty much negates the advantage of switching to the Mac OSX platform. Some more homework is needed here. Time is on my side though as this is not going to be a purchase made in the next 6 months. I did show Pauline the MacBook Pro at the Apple Store last night and she was impressed.

Surgery

We took Michael this morning to see a surgeon at the bequest of our pediatrician. We’d noticed a raised bump on his abdomen just below his rib cage. A quick examination of Michael by the surgeon revealed that he has what is known as an epigastric hernia. Basically the ligament between his abdomen muscles has not finished fusing together, so there is a hole and some fat has pushed its way out, thus the bump.

According to the surgeon, it will not go away on its own and, again according to the surgeon, the only treatment is surgery. Fortunately, Michael appears to be asymptomatic and does not feel any pain, so time is on our side. Since he is so little and the tissue is still forming, there is a likelihood that the sutures would not hold. So, he wants to wait a year and then re-examine him to see where things are at.

This would make it so both of our kids have had surgery already; something neither Pauline nor I have ever had. It’s somewhat unsettling… alright it’s damned unsettling. I’m going to try and read up some more about this.

School Daze

It’s hard to believe, but H starts school today. She’ll be starting “young-kindergarten” which is sort of a warm-up to full-fledged kindergarten next year. It’s kind of bittersweet and I think it’s gonna be hard watching her step onto the school bus later today (I’m working at home this morning so that I can be here to help see her off). Hopefully she’ll have a lot of fun and learn a bunch of great stuff this year.

We discussed the MacBook Pro this weekend and are going to work towards getting one, just not right away. We found a bunch of books that we no longer need and I listed them for sale on Amazon.com (never knew we could do that before). Within a few hours we had sold one of them…. only $2,789 more dollars to go!

Someday?

Someday, maybe, this will be mine:

17″ 2.16 GHz MacBook Pro

So yeah, about that Volvo idea…

Well I bought the damaged screw remover set from Sears that I referenced in yesterday’s blog. To put it short, it didn’t work. It certainly did something; it took and bored a nice smooth hole in the screw that did not budge one millimeter from the case. So now I have a nicely beveled screw that is still in the engine case. I’ll call Volvo today and see if they have any suggestions. One thing I’m contemplating is cutting a small slit in the plastic cover and slip the cover off over the damaged screw. Not an ideal solution, but at this point it might be the most practical.

Red Sox snapped a six game losing streak last night, aided by a botched fielding attempt by a Toronto outfielder that resulted in the ball falling over the wall for a two run Boston home run.

Practiced the guitar for over an hour last night. I’m starting to establish a practice routine. I’m trying to focus so that I don’t move on from one exercise to the next level until I have truly mastered the level that I’m on. The problem is, I’m not sure how exactly to determine if I have mastered it. Have I mastered it when I can play it accurately? Smoothly? Without tension? At a certain speed? All of the above?