I had my last lesson (for a couple months at least) with Greg last night, and it went really well. I stayed for a set of music, and of course he blew the doors off the place as usual. The only problem was that the audience was barely paying attention (well, most of them weren’t, anyway). It kind of annoyed me that there were so many people shouting at the top of their lungs that it felt like Greg had to play over them. Ah well, I’m sure if he could deal with it I should too.

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p>I have a new plan to replace a bunch of equipment I have so if you’re interested in any of the following let me know: an ADAT XT, Fender Deluxe Powerhouse Stratocaster, and/or an ART Nightbass SGX tube preamp/multiFX processor. I’m going to buy a Rane SP-13 preamp for my Stick.

Having a great Monday (isn’t it sickening?), wrote my first man page today for the little C program I cobbled up. Linux rules!

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p>I realized this morning that I somehow completely missed a haircut appointment I had last Thursday. I guess it was because I haven’t been checking my appointments on my Visor like I should every day. When I’m in the office it comes up on my Outlook calendar since I sync them up, but since I wasn’t here… you get the picture. Now I have to call and see if they’ll be able to fit me in this week… if not, it’s the Hair Butchery for me.

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p>Fixed a couple minor problems on this page. One day I need a better template, but right now I’m just too damn busy.

Eleya and I stayed up late last night to watch Dead Alive on IFC last night. It was without a doubt the goriest, funniest horror movie I have seen, ever. Hard to believe it’s by the same guy who directed the Lord of the Rings films. But we noted that it seems like whatever he undertakes, be it splattergore movies, fantasy epics, or true crime, he pulls no punches and attacks each project with unabashed gusto. Bravo for Peter Jackson! I’m very happy that a true independent spirit will likely be writing his own meal ticket for many decades to come.

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p>Had a nice practice today, going back for some more. I love my new setup, and have been doing a bit of POD programming to help it along. Tomorrow I get a last lesson with Greg probably until the end of summer. He is doing a lot of traveling the next two months so I expect not to see him for some time. Hopefully when he returns I’ll be a better player. More later, ta!

The baby took her first steps on Thursday night, about 7 or 8 of them, to walk over to me from down the hall. It was pretty amazing! She’s turning into such a little person so fast. It seems like just yesterday I was afraid to hurt her when I picked her up; now she seems almost indestructible from falling down so much.

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p>Eleya’s dance recital went great last night, and the baby was very good for about 90 minutes. Fortunately Eleya had danced by then, so I brought her home and put her to bed. It was pretty late for tiny tired eyes, so she was pretty spectacular, all things considered. The Farscape season finale was very good, although the cliffhanger at the end seemed a little deus ex machina for my taste. Everything up to that point was well done, especially the fact that the episode really centered around Aeryn and John’s relationship and what that had come to mean by that point. Next week they start running the first episode of the series on Friday, so catch it if you’ve never seen the show. It totally rocks because it centers on character development and story instead of cheap thrills and pseudo-science.

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p>Anyhoo, today I am having an awesome practice day. I redid my rig so that I can get beautiful separate effects for each side of my Stick (melody and bass). I’m doing it by cheating a bit since I have a Mackie 1202VLZ mixer, by running the Stick into two mic preamp channels, and then each of those is using one of the two effects sends out, and then the returns are coming in to channels 3-4. The one problem I’m having is that channel 2 seems to act differently than channel 1. I’m sure it’s a feature that I don’t understand, so I’ll work on that part. I’m using my ART Nightbass SGX for the bass side, and my Line6 POD 2.0 for the melody side. It’s kind of a chintzy setup, but I will be getting some new effects in the next year or so as budget allows.

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p>In any case, I’m off to keep practicing.

Hooray! Back at work. Just in time to clean up a few things and go home for the weekend. Eleya has a bellydance recital tonight so I’m taking the baby over there with me to see the show. I’ll cross my fingers and hope that she’s good so I can stay to see the whole thing. Otherwise it’s home to bed.

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p>Had a decent practice at lunch today, but most importantly I finished a C program I was working on and it works great. It’s pretty simple and thus not very impressive, but it does the trick and it’s really fast, which is the most important part. It’s just nice to reach a finishing point on something, say “I’m done,” and move on to the next task… a sense of accomplishment!

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p>I’ll do a quick writeup of the show tomorrow when I get a chance. Something tells me I scheduled something this weekend but I can’t remember what it was for the life of me. Hopefully it will occur to me before tomorrow. Signing off for now….

They don’t get any cuter than this.

So last night I hadn’t forgotten how to do my last cool motor skill, which was nice. I didn’t have a good technical practice in terms of being disciplined and going through studies. Instead I spent a lot of time listening to some songs and trying to get better at playing left hand bass/chords by ear. I did pretty well with quite a few songs so that was at least a little bit worthwhile. Class is over this afternoon and I can go back to doing meaningful work like the stuff piled on my desk at this point. I have to watch Evie tonight and tomorrow night, so I will probably not get a lot of practice other than lunch tomorrow. [sigh] I’ll put in some heavy time this weekend and then I’ll feel better.

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p>If you haven’t already found Radio Paradise, you should definitely tune in. Pretty much the best eclectic mix of great music that I’ve found on the web, and it’s not just a repeating loop — it’s actually programmed by live people in advance. Classic tunes, modern rock, and wanderings off the beaten path without being so esoteric that it turns off people who share your house, office, or car but maybe not your taste.

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p>The Carpenters’ tune “For All We Know” has a great bass part. Go check it out, I’m not joking.

Woohoo! Home early from class. I think I’ll practice for a while. If you haven’t already, check out Dictionaraoke, it’s da bomb baby!

Once again class is very slow today. I have time to surf and then catch up in about 10 minutes with everything done in the last hour. Yawnfest.

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p>So last night I had an excellent practice. I had a motor set up in my left hand where I was tapping a really simple figure in G. Imagine i=index, m=middle, r=ring, I was tapping i-m-i-r in fast eighth notes over and over, with i-m-i hitting G on the eighth string, 5th fret, and the r hitting D on the seventh string, 7th fret. (So, G-G-G-D.) Now over that I was playing just a few simple chords with the right hand as whole or half notes, either G/B, F/A, or C.

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p>Now, that sounds really simple, but this is the first time I’ve been able to do it with anything approaching a reasonable tempo and actually keeping time in my left hand. All this because Greg went over some exercises like this one at our lesson Monday. He rocks! I’m really excited and now I’m even doubly frustrated that I can’t practice during lunch time, especially with this class being so slow. Ah well, more later if I get even more bored than I am right now…

Long day at training today. Moving v-e-r-y s–l–o—w—-l——-y. I had an incredible practice with Greg last night. He really has me very revved up about practice and developing my skills. He’s really good about giving me constructive criticism but he also gave me some very nice compliments on things he thought I was doing well, which is great for my fragile ego.

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p>And my throat is starting to feel substantially better. Tonight I had the hottest buffalo wings ever that we ordered from Domino’s. And yes, I know I’m sort of dieting, but I had a very low-fat, low-calorie day, and I only ate two pieces of pizza, where I used to eat a lot more. And I feel full, which is a good sign I think. Anyway, those wings were so damn hot I think they cauterized the ulcers on my throat. At least it felt better after I ate them, which I found puzzling. (I was prepared for pain but I love hot wings so much I was willing to suffer for them.)

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p>Onward and upward! Why doesn’t anyone reading this blog ever e-mail me?