We are monitoring the situation.

I came home from the music store today with a pair of brand-new Behringer Truth B2031A studio monitors. I am really impressed with their sound and depth, especially given their low cost. We’d all like to be able to buy $1000 or $2000 monitors, but the life of a part-time musician revolves around making compromises. This is one with which I felt I could live. Behringer has obviously made some significant improvements to this line from the original B2031′s, mostly in that the highs are not as brittle and fatiguing. I can still hear a significant low-mid bump, but part of this is due to my poorly treated environment. Little steps…

Hey babe, come here often?

You married a music man.

Long day of music today… First I’m heading up to McLean for rehearsal at the unholy hour (relatively speaking in terms of the Book of Rawk, of course) of 10:00 a.m. After a lunch break, I assume, we’re going to the studio at 3:00 to work on additional vocals. I have to baby my voice a little today because it is in rough, rough shape after the week of illness. Nothing like a good coughing fit in the middle of a take: “My life is like a BLACCHAAAAHHHHAAACCCCKKK!”

Thank goodness I have the World’s Greatest Wife who manages everything at the homestead during my puerile little outings. And I hope you’re reading this too — see, I brag on you ALL the time!

Illin’.

Home sick today, blecch. This bizarre cold/sinus thing came on Monday without much warning. Medication last night didn’t prevent much except sleep, so I decided to recuperate. And no, I have nothing else interesting to post about today, just complaints about health. Join us next time for another exciting episode of “Oy vey, don’t even get me started about my gout.”

_{*No, I have no actual gout. Joke! JOKE!}

Signs of life.

Man, I didn’t realize it had been a whole week since my last post. It’s been a busy week, between working on Fedora commitments, finishing my short stint with the Lianna band, and working on the next Leah Morgan CD. Oh yeah, and the regular day job. And trying to make enough of an appearance around the house that my wife doesn’t start wondering where that ring on her left hand came from, and who keeps leaving dirty men’s clothes in the laundry basket.

Eleya and I did get a chance, albeit over several nights, to watch Room With A View, an older film I had somehow missed over the years, which was excellent. Eleya also got me two new CD’s in the course of her eBay shenanigans , Damien Rice’s album O and Julian Coryell’s older record Bitter To Sweet. The former is incredible… yes, I’m catching up again since it was released in 2003, but dammit, I was in London right before this was released and heard about it there at least. Haven’t finished the latter one yet.

For some reason, the kids have been incorrigibly misbehaved this weekend… nothing truly cataclysmic, just enough to make us wonder whether there is, in fact, an orphanage in our town, preferably with a drive-thru.

Lofty aspirations and low rumblings.

We had a decent gig at The Loft on Thursday night. Unfortunately it wasn’t very well attended. The standout exceptions were (of course) some of the Old Guard, the True Believers, the Through-Thick-N-Thin Pals. You know who you are, and you are much loved and appreciated, especially when you could have just stayed home and watched TV or something. Having these folks around made me sing a little better, rock a little harder, and enjoy myself a lot more. I probably have no way to repay the favor, so thank you, guys.

It wasn’t the band performance of a lifetime, but we hadn’t done a show together in about a month and a half, so that wasn’t totally unexpected. However, we have another couple shows before the next Loft gig and will be back up to our normal dazzling competency shortly. We did, however, trot out a new cover of “All Through The Night” which we enjoy playing a lot more than might be considered healthy.

Having done this for quite some time, I’ve grown very much accustomed to the utter lack of interest in American culture for live performance when it’s not accompanied by high ticket prices, name recognition, and overpriced concessions. I can understand that a lot of this is due to the incredibly high rate of Bands Who Doth Suck. I normally avoid that type of outfit for the gigs I play, other than the odd fill-in. But a lot of the people who swore up and down they would show up for this gig — an important one for us, as it was a new venue we are trying to add to our roster — and then didn’t show know this is a great live act. They’ve even seen us on Webcast, for Pete’s sake.

But when it comes to motivating people to get up off their recliners and see a live performance, what exactly is the most effective way? I’m going to have to walk a high wire on Tuesday when I go back to work and listen to all the excuses about how people couldn’t make it out. You can’t risk offending people who might come out and see you later. I guess the answer is to blanket so many folks that if 19 out of 20 of them don’t show up, you still end up with a lot of people at the show.

In other news, I am maintaining another new package in Fedora Extras now, nautilus-sendto, which does pretty much what you would expect, giving you a context (right-click) menu that will send files via Evolution, GAIM, or Bluetooth. It’s pretty sweet and comes complete for FC3, FC4, and Rawhide/FC5.

In other geeky gearhead news, I picked up a new toy today, a Bass PODxt Live. All my musician friends know I am a huge Line 6 fan. The modeling stuff these geniuses produce far outshines anything else on the market for quality, value, authenticity, and sheer wow factor. I brought mine home, plugged it into the effects return on my Super Redhead, and immediately started rocking, HARD. Ethan started dancing a little jig as soon as he heard the pure bass goodness issuing forth from my trusty amp, so I took that as a good sign. I can’t wait to use this on Friday night’s gig with the Lianna band!

I’m currently enjoying — yes, I know I’m late again with this one — The Postal Service’s album Give Up. Beautiful!

The meaning of fear.

My Internet in the hands of the UN? I guess this means when someone poisons DNS they will send a sharply-worded letter, or maybe Hans Blix will come inspect the offender’s UNIX servers.

And from Hollywood, a savior arose…

Thank goodness Barbra is back to set us straight! Nothing like a little timely politics to make sure your album dates itself at the earliest opportunity. My favorite bit:

Streisand and Gibb first worked together on her best-selling 1980 album “Guilty,” which contained hits like the title track and “Woman In Love.” Streisand calls that album “really the easiest album I ever made.” “Barry is so talented that he can write songs and produce them and make the tracks and sing the background,” she said.

Of course it was easy; Barry does all the work, and you just show up, sing, and make notes for another chapter in your breathless autobiography. Silly cow.

Oh boy, Oldboy.

Eleya and I watched Chanwook Park’s fabulously twisted and sumptuously shot revenge epic Oldboy last night. It’s not hard to see why this film garnered the Grand Prix at Cannes, since it is gripping from start to finish and features incredible acting, some tense action scenes, and a story with depth and emotion. Warning: this is not a good date film, but highly recommended anyway.

Finally, the band will be reconvening today for a rehearsal in advance of a few days of recording and a gig this coming Thursday. I’ve really missed playing with my normal crew, so it will be a lot of fun, I’m sure.

Feint for the faint of heart.

Word to the wise: DON’T use the new kernel packages I prepared. They will cause spurious lockups when disk activity rises over a certain level. The libata/ATAPI code is not ready for prime time. John Linville said as much in the bug I referenced, but I wanted to try it anyway. You should back down to the standard kernel, 2.6.12-1.1456_FC4, and use that.

I am preparing new kernels that are essentially repackaged versions of the standard Fedora kernel, so anyone who updated to mine using yum will be reverted to the old (buggy, but stable) behavior.

UPDATE: Apparently I needn’t worry, since the official channel just released 2.6.12-1.1526_FC4. The odd ICH6M-related SATA behavior, unfortunately, persists.