April 6,2003

We decided that we need nice clothes to wear on April 9th. So we went out to the mall in Portland and looked around for a while. Gap. Baby Gap. Gap kids. Large pictures of anorexic models. Over prices flimsy clothes sown in the third world. What is a young pinko transvestite to do? So we went to the Nordstroms Rack, which is a store that seels factory seconds originally destines for Nordstroms. I bought some trousers. Trousers are just like Men’s pants except that they’re made of wool and they’re unhemmed. uh yeah. this is an exciting story. i bought some rayon trousers with no hems and a blue shirt after trying on all the shirts at two stores and none of them fit because apparently nobody who wants a button down shirt with collar is skinny with long arms. the end. Then we went to Powells and I bought Jarhead. Christi’s dad had to rush back to Roseburg to be at an 8:00 AM meeting in southern Oregon.

song! http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~makarov/anthems/internationale-en.mp3

April 7, 2003

We needed to do laundry before we left, but we overslept. Then the soap wasn’t rinsing out of things, so we had to run the laundry twice. Then the dryer took forever. But that was ok, because Christi’s mom ended up hemming my trousers twice. Finally, late in the afternoon, we loaded our car and drove to Coffee People.
And then we went to Seattle. Our hotel is acorss the street from Jack Straw, which is much more convient than the other-side-of-the-university location we had last time. The room is nice. They gave us two beds without asking our preference, though. We could switch for a cheaper room, but we’re lazy. Remember, when you make an ASSUMPTION, you make an ASS out of U and MPTION.
Ellen Fullman invited us over for curry, so we had grabbed a jar of homemmade chutney from Christi’s mom on the way out and gave it to Ellen. The chutney was good. One of her friends came over with computer problems. I gave him a bunch of probably useless advice. I like sounding like I know what I’m talking about, but, of course, I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve never owned or trouble-shot a computer running anything microsoft past windoze 3.1. My advice on fixing windoze problems is less than useful.
Ellen is doing a video project called Bridging the Gap and it’s about how arts funding has gone to heck. She was in a bike/car accident last year and lost a tooth. A new tooth will be made, but not yet, so she has a gap in her smile, which is not very noticable. But it’s a front tooth, so , well, you know how you would feel about it if you had a front tooth missing. So she’s getting folks that are artists or work at arts organizations to grin in photos and she’s photoshopping out of their smiles the same tooth that she lost. She’s going to fade from a “before” pitcture to an “after” picture. She showed us the video. It’s very funny.
and she played us a bunch of songs on an album she hasn’t released yet. She’s singing on all of them. They’re all kind of creepy, but in a good way. One of them has sounds that would work well in the incidental music of the doctor Who TV show. I didn’t write this in any of my personal essays, but the Doctor Who music is a big influence of mine. It’s the best music that you’ll find on a TV show. I like the rest of the show too, because the plots are silly and the lighting is bad and the costumes are funny and it’s so darn nerdy, but my appreciation of the music is real, un-ironic enjoyment. The only reason Christi would initially consent to watch Dr Who with me was because she liked the music. Anyway, so I compared some of Ellen’s music to Dr. Who. I’m not sure if the compliment came across 100% clearly.

April 8, 2003

We tooled around Seattle some. We decided we needed haircuts, so we went to a barbershop reccomended by Ellen. It’s in the Freemont district, which is kind of hip. We noticed that on the corner was a giant statue which evoked a strong resemblance to Lenin. We parked near a rocketship perched on a building. On the way, walking down the block to the barber shop, we came upon a thai restuarant and stopped for a really good lunch. Then, after lunch, two doors further, we passed a place offering vegan waffles and vegan bisquits and gravy! Too bad we just had lunch. We also bight biodiesel fuel nearby. My reference said to call the retailer first so I did and he said sure. So we showed up to the address and discovered that they were selling biodiesel out of the back of a van! So we filled up.
Later, we discovered that a coffee shop near our hotel has wireless networking, so I could check my email. Wesleyan wants to know whether or not I will attend by the 15th. I sent them email explaining that I would be back the 15th and could visit them after that. They said that the very latest I could get back to them would be the 17th. So I booked a flight from Tacoma to Hartford flying overnight, Sunday night. Arg.
We went to a copy place to print and copy programs. We asked for 16 copies and they gave us maybe ten times that many. Anybody want a program?
We got James from the airport and introduced him to Joan at Jack Straw and then went for dinner. It was late, so we didn’t go to a movie or a concer or a protest or anything. Seattle is not at it’s most exciting on tuesday nights anyway. This week is spring break.

April 9th, 2003

Early in the morning, we retrieved the rest of our ensemble from the airport. We walked over to Jack Straw to stash the cello and head out for breakfast. We introduced the ensemble + Tiffany and Ed as our “entourage.” Joan was excited that so many people came up from the bay area. We researsed all of our non-tape and normal tape pieces. Those were the ones that either were just the ensemble or only had a normal two track “tape” (actually a CD, but whatever). after we felt happy with those. We took a lunch break. My dad showed up just as we were leaving, so we piled him in to our six passenger rental car too. We went to Capitol Hill, the gay neightborhood, because James said he wanted to go where the cool people were. We ate at a Russian place that served perogies. Then we went to a coffee shop that Ellen took us to last time we came to town.
We went back to the hotel so the ensemble could nap. Christi and I went to JS to lay out the audience piece that Christi wrote. Then she re-editted The Greek of the River to You. Then we came back to change and then showed back up at JS at 5:00, when the sound engineer said he’d be done with the folks before us, he was going to throw them out at 5:00 whether they were done or not.
That didn’t actually occur, but it was ok. I asked him to setup pieces that needed rehearsing first. So we tried to setup MyMom which uses a three track tape. The tape didn’t work. He explained that tapes never work. Right. So I burned a copy of the protools session from Christi’s computer, where thankfully, I had put a copy of it just in case. I put that on the studio computer and we got sound out to the right places and rehearsed that while he hung the projection screen for Aelita. Then I asked him to setup mics so we could practice Tones, while he set up the projector. At every possible phase, equipment failed to work as expected. He would look angrily at the gear and say, “Why aren’t you working, you stupid, goddamn son of a bitch?” This is how engineers talk to their tools. I could tell he was an excellent engineer. However, as every single thing seemed to go wrong, it became kind of unnnerving. When at 7:20, we had not yet checked the CDs, and we were suppossed to start at 7:30, I started to become alarmed. Apparently, I looked alarmed.
We were actually, amazingly ready to go at 7:30. But Joan thought more people would show up, so we waited at least ten more minutes to start. More people did not show up. The Bay Area delegation outnumbered the locals.
All of the pieces went as planned, except for a minor snafu on Tones. I was still nervous as all heck at first, but got more confident as things worked right. When we played My Mom, my dad started crying, which I expected (I should have warned him, but I didn’t…), but so did other people. I co-wrote something that made people cry….
I had been worried about the in-progressness of Aelita. It’s still very rough. But we did it right after My Mom, so I guess they decided they liked us. People laughed at my jokes, even the lame ones. Of course, they mostly liked us already, since Christi or I knew practically everyone there. Maybe I was just un-nervous enough to try making lame jokes. Anyway, Aelita went perhaps more smoothly than I had ever seen it go. In a stroke of luck, James’ drum pattern happened to match up with the on-screen hammering where the worker is forging a sicle. We hadn’t wanted to close with aelita, becase it wasn’t the strongest thing, but we probably should have anyway.
Then the audience got to ask questions. Trimpin asked why I called tape music “tape music” is it was really a CD. Ummm. I don’t remember all the other questions an asnwers. Nobody offered feedback. And nothing got recorded cuz they can’t record while using the speakers in the room. But at least 4 extra people have now heard our music, which is good. I hope they liked it.
Our whole entourage, which had grown by Christi’s mom, Joan and Heather (who also works at JS) went wandering into the restaurant district to find a place that would make us all food at 9:45. We had a nice dinner. Good conversations. Christi’s mom and Carolyn talked about how happy they were that Christi and I had put on nice clothes for the event, for example. The conversations I heard though, were more about arts and stuff. My dad paid for everybody’s dinner. It was very nice of him.
We walked back to the hotel and I said goodbye to everyone who would be leaving early the next morning. Sleep.

April 10th

I promised that I would ride to the airport with everybody this morning, but it was the first night I actually slept since I got here and I sleeply broke my promise in the morning. Christi is letting me sleep so I won’t be as completely exhausted when I get to Connecticut.
Lisa didn’t leave this morning, though, so we went over to Pike’s Market with her. Christi bought a jaw harp and baby clothes aglore for Owen. I wanted to get him a dress, but Christi said that his mother might not be happy about that. Then we went over to the Freemont district to have lunch at the veagn-frienly co-op that I had seen there earlier. It was great. We went to look at the Lenin look-alike statue to see who was made tolook like Lenin. Christi and I had been joking earlier with returning in the dead of night with a brass plaque falsely labelling the statue as of being a statue of Lenin. Anyway, we looked at the plaque and discovered that the subject of the statue was . . . Lenin! It had been salveged from Solvakia. Then we went to look at the rocket ship and found out it was salvaged from the cold war also. the plaque explained that Freemont was the center of the universe. It certainly is a self-consciously funky place. The plaque made the area sound very enamoured with itself. Still, statues of lenin and rockets ships are cool.
We took Lisa to the airport and then sort of hung around for the rest of the day. I’m not in my traveling rythm. Also, it’s a real pain scheduling meetings with professors next week from here via Christi’s laptop. We should meet back up with Tiffany and Ed tomorrow, I hope.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Lenin!

So a couple of days ago I went for a haircut in the Freemont district of Seattle. I kept telling people that the statue there was funny because whomever the illustrious personage that the statue was erected in honor of looked a lot like Lenin in it’s rendition. Today, I went back to the district to eat a vegan freindly co-op and went over to see who the statue was really of. It’s Lenin. There’s a monumental statue of Lenin in Seattle. I kept telling folks that I suspected that Seattle was left of San Francisco.
But, perhaps in the spirit of capitalism, the staue is for sale. For $250,000, you can have a stue of Lenin emerging from gunas and flames. One of the only statues where he is depicted as a revolutionary rather than an intullectual. If only I had an extra quarter of a million dollars for a monument to Communism.

Email

I got some email about my website:

I had a badly sticking CD, and — finding advice for repairing same on your Web
site via Google — applied toothpaste (Crest for Sensitive Teeth). Worked like a
charm: many thanks! Let me know if you ever need advice on getting a sticking
antiquarian book repiared.

April 4th 2003

We were supossed to leave for Portland this morning, but I needed to see the tax guy, since we’re returning on the 15th. the earliest I could get was today at 9:00 AM. So I stayed up last night late making Mitch’s singing quieter on the Aelita soundtrack. He sang La Internationale into my voice mail a few days ago. I got a recording of it (and Xena scratching like crazy) by holding a microphone up to the phone. Anyway, I fixed that, then went to bed late. Then got up to drive to Los Gatod by 9:00 AM. I thought it would take at least 1.5 hours, but it only took one. New freeways in the last ten years.
We went over to my dad’s house to burn a DVD of Aelita. He had no blank media so we went to Elite Computers to buy some blanks. Christi saw a DVD burner there and was surprised by the lowness of the price and bought it. But no software. So we went back to my dad’s house and used his software + burner. iDVD is cool. My dad and I got into a disagreement about the government. I said it was being run by defense contractors. He said it was being run by the media. Later, Christi pointed out that the defense contractors own the media. She said, “It’s rediculous to argue about whether the oil companies or the media or arms dealers are running things. They’re all the same people.”
My dad repeated his oft-stated theory that the US hasn’t won a war since WWII (because 5 years later the places are always worse off than we arrived as far as our interests go) and hasn’t had a government since the 60’s. Presumably, he means since Kennedy was shot. When I was a youngun’, I had no idea what he was talking about. We have a court system, elections, etc. Now I think he means than an elite oligarchy is running the show for it’s own, immediate interests instead of longer range national interests. He says that Rome didn’t have a government either for a while, until Ceaser crossed the Rubicon. Conservatives alwatys like to compare the US to Rome right before Ceaser or the Weimar Republic, that is Germany right before Hitler. During the Clinton years, Rush Limbaugh was always talking about how Clinton was like the last president of the Weimar Republic. Great. So what does that make Bush?
The NRA always fights gun control measures by pointing out that Hitler confiscated handguns. They say that they should be able to all have handguns without any sort of tracking or registration in case a future Hitler comes to power, they would all be armed. But the NRA would have supported Hitler. . ..
After burning a DVD, which is inexplicably titled “South Pacific,” we went home and packed and got the rest of the music together. I needed to put My Mom on an ADAT tape. I’d never used the optical output of my DIGI001 before. All of the final edits and dumps to take took a couple of horus at least. Then, we decided that we needed to get gas. Rather than look up the address of the Richmond Biodiesel station (which Christi insists will only sell biodiesel to boats) or put petroleum in the car, we drove to the 3rd street station in the City at 3:00 in the afternoon. By the time we got back across the Bay Bridge, it was 4:00. We got to Portland at 2:00 AM.

April 5th 2003

I got email from Wesleyan asking if I was going to go to school there. I wrote back and said that I anted to visit first and that I could come anytime after April 15th. Then I looked at my calendar and saw that I had to reply in writing with “yes” or “no” by April 15th. I wrote back explaining that I wouldn’t be home until the 15th and asking what to do. I’m worried that I will be precieved as flaky, but I am flaky, so I guess they would figure it out anyway.
Christi’s mom is sick. I called up my favorite Protland Digital Audio store (no sales tax) and asked about a pro-level minidisc recorder. They told me that they don’t have any with digital outs. I surfed around for a while. The cheapest pro-level sony has digital outs. I called back and asked if they hads them, they said no but the would order it. I’m not sure if they are actually planning on ordering one. Whatever. Minidiscs are cool. They don’t sound quite as good as DATs but are a whole lto cheaper and more robust and portable. My collection of recording gear continues to slowly grow. Yesterday, Elana, our 11 year old neighbor came over and was wandering around while we packed. She said we had too much cool stuff and had spoiled ourselves. prolly.

My last call to Digidesign Tech Support

this line is for registered products only.
I was helpfully reminded. The software has been out for less than 90 days and clearly falls under the warranty. sheesh. anyway. i got some work around for my problems. When protools crashes on startup (which it does about half the time, which seems to imply that it corrupts it’s preferences just about everytime it runs), you throw away all the preference files. When it refuses to play audio, which is just wayyy to frequent, well, that’s a problem with the SCSI card that talks to my CD Burner. this worked fine under os9, but under osx, i can remove the SCSI card, or I can do the work-around. The work around is to open the project file (which may or may not crash the software, see above) and save a copy of it to my firewire drive, using the save a copy command. then quit protools. then open the new copy. i have to do this for every pre-existing project that i want to edit. and for some reason, protools 6 won’t send midi out to quicktime, which means i have to go find synthesizers and plug them in to hear the midi parts. this would be find if i was recording a prog rock balland, since all the midi would be going out to synths anyway. but the midi is just there to remind me what the cello, flute and percussion are playing. it’s just a place holder. and my synths suck enough (for cello emulation, at least) that quicktime is better. anyway, i end up working with os9 protools more than half the time anyway. there are small feature improvements in PT6. Mostly, they have to do with how highlighting is handled. but all in all, it was not the best $75 I ever spent. I’d expect better from digidesign. This is not the kind of software that earned their reputation for excellence.

FTPing with Safari

I previously reported that Safrai barfs on FTPing. Not so. Safari causes your computer to mount the FTP server as a remote disk. Clearly, Safari is headed in the Internet Explorer embedded in the Operating System direction. You can also use Safari to mount a shared network drive. I don’t know how to do it without Safari, actually. But it still takes much longer to transfer ten gigs across the airport than across firewire.

Tiffany’s BART Experience

So BART was very delayed this afternoon. Computers were down and Tiffany’s train kept starting and stopping in the tube. After a long while, it emerged from the tube and the guy sitting in front of her, coughingly reached for his cell phone. this guy, who kept coughing, was sitting in front of Tiffany, near the door, facing about a quarter of the train. anyway, he called up his doctor and said, “Yeah, so I just got back from China and about half of my tour group are all experiencing the same symptoms. I’ve just got some chills and a fever and a cough. what are the other signs? *pause* Oh, well, yeah, but I probably don’t have it.” The doors opened for west Oakland and half the train car got off.
Um, yeah, so if folks can get SARS from airplanes, the can prolly get it from BART. don’t ride BART if you’re sick!!!
so we’re throwing Tiffany out of the house. No, um, she’s upstairs drinking OJ and popping echinacea.