2006-08-31
Please Return Calls
When I call you and leave a message call me back, especially if it's in response to a call you made and it is holding up an order!
2006-08-21
Now to the point. The selection there sucks! I mean it's one thing to be an 800 pound gorilla but at least be usable. They have the following guitars: Strat, Tele, Les Paul, SG, Ibanez Artcore and Funky Shechter. An entire wall full of all the same guitars. Just endless montony. Their pro audio department is a complete joke. One guy literally said, "I've never actually used an SM57." Really? How does that happen. Like them or not, they are everywhere! This pro audio guy has never used one. That's the person I want to spend thousands of dollars with. You would think there would be at least minimal training or a policy of in your downtime, experiment with the stuff you are trying to sell.
"We can order it for you." That's a phrase that people often complain about regarding smaller businesses. The little guy can't keep a 250,000 square foot warehouse. I don't expect that. It makes it hard to make choices sometimes as you can't try things but most people work with you on returns. When a store this size is saying that about everything I am at all interested in it's pretty sad. They ran everyone else out and they aren't any better in terms of inventory.
On a lot of message boards I hear people say things like, "You can check them out at Guitar Center. Then order it from ________." After seeing a bunch of posts like that I was actually a little excited thinking that I might be able to test out some new stuff. Nope. And no I don't want to sign up for your contest.
I Usually Hate Printers
At home we had this Canon. It printed so nice. The colors were really rich and it did full bleed printing and had a flatbed scanner. We didn't print that much so we figured it would last a long time. Nope. Turns out not printing a lot allowed the heads to get all gummed with crap and that was the end of that. There was a special solution you could buy to clean it but from reports I read it was a pretty big waste of time.
The one printer that worked, at least marginally, was a Brother MFC that was at my office before me. We've had to replace all the standard parts but it printed and faxed for over 5 years. After the Canon met the dumpster we looked around and picked up a Brother MFC-7220. It's only black and white but most of what we need it for is for printing papers for Jacey's classwork. I hooked it up to the windows workstation and was done with it.
So now I'm trying to be more energy conscious and my workstation is idle most of the time so I have it going to standby or hibernate. Jacey does not like that. It logs my user out, the printer isn't available and it's a pain for me. I looked at Brother's site and sure enough: Linux drivers! One of the easiest installs I've ever done. I installed their RPMS, I had to use '--nodeps' on one, and plugged it in. SUSE automatically detected it and setup the CUPS queue. Beautiful.
Since this is a multi-function I wanted to try the scanning as well. They provide a SANE backend and it installed just as easy. I setup the 'sane-port' service and downloaded ScanImage and I had some scans! I am mighty impressed at the strides all of this open source software has taken in the last few years.
So the Brother is only black and white. When I bought my desktop it came with a free printer, a Lexmark Z705. I knew Lexmark had added a lot of Linux support for their hardware but figured this free model was low-end enough that it was a lost cause. I was too pessimistic! Of the few models they do support this is one! I haven't set it up yet. Maybe soon though.
2006-08-20
I Never Thought I'd Be Excited About Plugins
The Massey plugins are amazing. I can't sing their praise enough right now. I'm sure some of it is because I just shelled out money for them but man, simple and effective. I bought the VT3 EQ, the CT4 Compressor and the L2007 Mastering Limiter. I'm working on the new His Last Chance albume and these are making a HUGE difference in the tones that I previously had.
2006-08-09
"No Room 9, Kentucky" Lyrics?
WTF? I've got the "Hit Liquor/No Room 9, Kentucky" split and I just wanted the damn lyrics. Everything I found had the "Lyrics not released by the artist" crap. What the heck is that.
Happy birthday, baby, yeah You make me feel Blue Swollen eyes worth Since you left Happy birthday baby yeah I love only Yooouuuuuu Swollen eyes worth Since you left That's approval A stamp of a knife with initials on Rubber a doodle of some ancient mother fucking her son I predict By 3 a.m. the pill bottle top will have come undone To kiss through the kitchen screen To kiss through the kitchen screen By 3 a.m. the pill bottle top will have come undone She'll hand you One long wind short side story That starts with The words there's no room Kentucky 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I guess you'll do just fine By 3 a.m. the pill bottle top has come undone She'll hand you One long wind short side story That's untrue There is no room 9 No room 9 She'll hand you One long wind short side story That's untrue Cuz there is no room 9 9 9
Stupid Cliché
Stupid clicheé. Unfortunately it's seems to keep ringin true: The Calm Before the Storm. Every facet of my life. This morning the battery in my van was dead. That make three out of four of my vehicle down. I got the van fixed quick enough but still sucked.
At work we've been literally making up stuff to do. We rearranged some things. I brought in some old books and went through highlighting sections for people. We have re-installed some in house machines and tried new software. Well now we are slammed. I'm truly expecting to end up spending many evenings at work in the coming weeks.
Lily starts school next week. Just as I get busy at work we'll be back on schedule with Prime Time and juggling all that around. The storm is beginning.
Happy Birthday Jacey
The big... hehe, I won't tell. Sunday I took her to Garozzo's for wine and dinner and tonight I brought her a shiny pink RAZR. Her Mom, Sister and Dad went in a decoreated our kitchen in this really nice wine theme.
Lily lost her first tooth.
It took a long time but she yanked it out last Sunday night!
2006-08-06
Bob's Tavern Reunion Float
This weekend was Puddle Jumper Days in Odessa, MO. My grandparents used to own a bar there and my family would often do a float for the parade. This year Uncle Ron, Aunt Isy and my Mom all got together and decided to do a "last float" of sorts. They had always been a western theme and this year was no exception.
The set was two round tables and glasses filled with ginger ale, or beer, but officially it was all ginger ale. The back was a paneled wall with wanted posters, death notices, swinging saloon doors and a "Saloon" sign. Out side were small building models for Bob & Shirley's Tavern, General Store and Jail. All the men were dressed up in western wear and the women were "saloon hall girls." The parade had almost 90 floats this year and the high school football team's float passed us on it's way back after completing through town and one of the players said, "They've got whores over there!"
The participants were:
- Cowboys: Uncle Ron, Jim, Daniel, Justin, Shawn (?), some other guy and me.
- Saloon girls: My mom, Phyllis, Jocy, Carly
- Prarie girls: Cindy, Lily
- "Man" from south of the border: Aunt Isy (with a fake moustache)
- Native: Remington
We had recorded an altered version of "Thanks for the Memories" and we had PA all setup (thanks to Ryan) but when we started going the inverter kept crapping out every few seconds.
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