You have to wonder about advertising sometimes. I just saw a commercial for, I believe, American Eagle. In the commercial there were lots of young people playing guitars, mostly still shots that would animate and then zip around to another still shot. For most of the commercial I had no idea what was going on or what it was for. But there was one shot where a person was very prominently using an Apple laptop computer. I spent the remainder of the commercial thinking, “Is this a commercial for Macintosh?” Mostly what I took away from the commercial was a rememberance of Apple products. I guess that’s effective advertising, right?

They say it’s my birthday today. I don’t really feel too birthday-like, for some reason. It’s been a very long summer. It should have been a lot better than this. A few months ago I was really looking forward to today. Now it just seems like a day and there’s not really much special about it.

The evil Queen is attempting to take her revenge. I surveyed the field of battle yesterday, and it appeared that I had been victorious. I scoured the area with water, hoping to wash away any remnants of her army, as well as the abudant amounts of dirt that were insuring that she and her minions had a constant supply of food. No one returned last night…

This morning, however, Ali encountered almost a dozen very small spiders, perhaps children of the Queen, INSIDE THE HOUSE. She’s a crafty one, that Queen. Even in death she plots against me…

Well, the Spider Queen and I just did battle, and I wish I could say the results were good. Unfortunately, she brought two friends along with her. One was fairly cleverly hidden, and I only noticed him out of the corner of my eye. I attacked him first, firing a salvo of bug spray at him, but he was clever and quickly dashed up his web and escaped. I have not seen him since then.

The Queen herself took several shots of spray, but finally began to fall and convulse on the ground. Several more blasts for good measure assured that she was no longer moving.

I began to spray the rest of the area to be sure I destroyed any smaller minions. What appeared to be some possible eggs turned out, in fact, to be a rather large companion of the Queen. He uncurled his massive legs and began to run from barrage after barrage of bug spray. A slight breeze rose to thwart my attempts, but I continued to fire, filling the entire area with poison. He was resiliant, though, and appeared to survive my repeated attempts to end his life. Finally, he curled up and appeared to stop moving. He was still perched above the door, however, and I thought he might be faking it. I continued to blast him, and every once in a while he would move a leg, giving away the truth of his condition. When I finally thought I had defeated him, despite his continued position above the door, I took up the garden hose, hoping to wash away any remains as well as webs.

As the water hit the immense arachnid, he unfurled his legs and began a rapid descent towards the ground. I tried to resume my poison barrage, but lost sight of him against the background of the black door. Taking up the hose once again, I began to spray down the entire area, hoping to at least wash him away and make him reconsider taking up position over my door. I regret to say that I cannot confirm or deny the current condition of the monster.

When the new day dawns and I can survey the situation, I hope to find the area clear of infestation. I fear, however, that the battle is not yet over…

Apparently I can’t nap anymore. I used to be great at napping when I was in college. A championship napper (if they had championships for that sort of thing). Not anymore.

Back in college I could go back to my dorm from a class, take a nap, get up and be at my next class which was only twenty minutes after that last one. I’d set an alarm, and whether it was 10 minutes or an hour, I could wake up no problem and I felt better. Now, when I try to take a nap, it seems that if I don’t set an alarm, it’ll last at least three hours. If I do set an alarm, it’s often unlikely that I’ll even wake up when it goes off. If I do wake up, I’m incredibly groggy and disoriented, not really feeling refreshed but in fact feeling like I shouldn’t have bothered to go to sleep at all.

Oh, for the glory days…

My baby is already making me grumpy. This is not a good sign…

I’m being held hostage in my house by a giant spider.

That is all.

I had a great conversation tonight. I’m really excited about something. I don’t want to talk too much about it, yet, but it’s good that I’m finally excited about SOMETHING, again. Sometimes I really, really love my friends.

I’m going to give you a short science lesson which will explain why Reid Sound normally has a policy of not using a client’s equipment. Many of you will simply want to skip the next paragraph.

Let’s say you have a band in a relatively small room, and that band, without any extra amplification, is playing at 105-110 decibels. This is very loud. On average, stadium rock concerts go from 110-120 decibels, and OSHA says you shouldn’t sustain listening at that volume for more than a few minutes. Now, in that same room you have a sound system which is capable of producing volumes of approximately 126 decibels. In rough terms, every 10 decibels that you add doubles the perceived volume. So, it shouldn’t be a problem for this sound system to produce a volume capable of being heard over the unamplified band. Now, let us say that this sound system comprises of speakers which are rated at 400 watts at 8 ohms (a measure of resistance). Now let’s also say that you are powering these speakers off of an amplifier that is capable of delivering 400 watts per channel at 4 ohms. This amplifier, when delivering power into an 8 ohm speaker, will only deliver approximately 250-300 watts. In practice, you want an amplifier to deliver almost twice the rated power of the speaker so that you can drive the speaker to its full potential without driving the amplifier into clipping, thereby causing distortion. So, can you see the problem with the above scenario?

Needless to say, the show did not go very well. You could hear very little of the vocals (the only thing being reinforced) and what you could hear was pretty distorted. For some reason the band seemed reasonably happy, but there is nothing worse than standing by the mixing board during a show and having nearly every person in the room come up to you and tell you that the vocals need to be louder, as though you are deaf and hadn’t already noticed that. Some people, when you try to explain to them that you cannot turn them any higher, become very argumentative. In the end, there is no way for me to make them understand what is really happening, nor to make them understand that it is not my fault, but the fault of the amplifier that the band brought for me to use. All those people will remember is that the sound for that show sucked.

Welcome to “Stalin The Musical”