Just Noticed

I just realized that it’s been nearly 365 days since I last cast eyes on “American Idol”. I’m sitting here smiling, feeling like a better person for it.

I also realized that by Tuesday, the soda machine is out of Diet Coke. Apparently, that’s the beverage of choice in these here parts. Tomorrow will be a better day, most certainly because Diet Coke will return to a closer machine.

There’s this giant girl who works someplace in this building. No, she’s not heavy, but I’d say that she’s possibly over 6′ tall. And she’s a cutie, in the sense that I could see her wearing a Van Halen t-shirt to work someday, understanding the irony at the same time. I see her every few days, but I’m having problems with eye contact. It’s because I’m all paranoid that eye contact on my part will give away how aware I’m of her tallness, most certainly because I’m practically wide-eyed every time that I see her.

I have gotten my co-workers hopped up on miniature chocolates, of the Hershey’s variety. Sure, there’s better stuff out there than Hershey’s, but is there anything more comforting than the bittersweet taste of these wrapped-up morsels?

Book Update

Well, cms and I might’ve found a new home for our book. In the end, as a consumer, you might get the book for free, from a respected source. Our earning power is likely done, but I’m glad that we can finally put the product out, and under more sane conditions.

Stay tuned.

The Sexually Explicit Act of Describing Drum Sounds

I got together with Joe this past Saturday. Saturday was a marvelous day: warm, sunny, a great overall day to walk around the city of Boston, buy some new music equipment, drink too much wine, then walk around the city some more. We didn’t meet any girls this time, but it was still fun.

(Also noteworthy was the fact that Banjo Center is wholly tolerable if you’re hopped up on merlot and a belly full of veal parm.)

I bought two snare drums, a stand, a new kick drum pedal, and a couple of carrying cases on Saturday. The more that I’ve spent my time recording music, the more that I’ve become, uhh, in-tune with instruments and sounds. So, I’d come to realize that both the existing kick pedal and snare drum needed to be replaced with items that didn’t rattle or ring. At Joe’s suggestion, we headed on over to Jack’s Drum Shop in Boston. I’d been wasting time shopping at other places, I soon learned. Jack’s was a tremendous store, and I found what I was looking for in about a hour.

Despite my purchases, I’d forgotten that stock drum heads are crap. What I was getting on track was pretty damned horrible for a snare drum of that quality (a nice 6.5×14″ Ludwig maple). The head was too lively, so instead of a “crack!”, I heard a thwap, and then a “ping!”. And, is the bane of any recording engineer’s existence, the thwap and “ping!” appeared in every microphone in the room. That wouldn’t do, so a few types of replacement heads were required.

I tried to describe this phenomenon to a co-worker of mine, and the words came out thusly:

“So, I’ve got this wood snare, but I need to get (a new) head (for it). I can smack it and whack it, but it still rings. The head’s about as tight as it’s going to get, so my only thought is a replacement. I’ve done some looking, and what I’ll get is a Remo Powerstroke (head), as it’s dry and coated.”

Why are drums sexually explicit? Suggestive word count from the last paragraph:
Head: 3
Smack: 1
Whack: 1
Tight: 1
Wood: 1
It’s dry: 1
Powerstroke: 1

And I didn’t even use the word “stick”!

The Deconstruction of Java

When Sun released Java to the public something in the early-to-mid 1990’s, I don’t think they knew what they were in for. Repeat after me, so you don’t forget:

“Compile Once. Run anywhere.”

That’s some mantra, I tell you. And for at least a year? It seemed true. I could launch a web browser that supported Java, and play a few games of tic-tac-toe, or maybe giggle at some Bouncing Head applets. It worked out.

Each time I stick — even a toe — back into the world of Java, I realize how far afield it’s seemingly all gotten. It seems, for whatever reason, that the “CORA” mantra has taken a back seat to the programming language and its extensions. And it seems even more apparent that Sun doesn’t care to bring any sanity into the process of displaying applets in web browsers anymore. Maybe it’s old hat? Maybe they’ve just given up? Who knows.

Now, I can understand why it might seem like I’m flogging a dead horse here. The reason why I’m mentioning these things now is basically because I’ve practiced a “live and let-live” thing when it comes to Java — for many years. In other words, I’ve barely had to deal with Java, and it never precluded me from looking at pornographic images or animations of bouncing heads, so I wasn’t all that aware of its shortcomings. With my new job, amazingly, many of our administrative tools are, well, written in Java. To access these tools, you have to use a web browser.

Unfortunately for me, I’ve tried *7* different web browsers on three different platforms, and only *1* of them (an ancient version of Netscape Communicator for an equally antiquated version of Linux) renders my Java applets correctly. All of this “new technology”, under which lives Sun’s “Java Virtual Machine”, displaces my Java applets into a gigantic bit bucket like you’d shovel manure into a wheelbarrow. This whole experience had lead me to one conclusion: there’s either something wrong with Java, or there’s something wrong with Sun.

My suspicion, actually, is that it’s a little bit of both.

And, to think, this whole line of thought started when I got a “bad magic number” message when attempting to open a Java applet in this series of web browsers. Thing with a “bad magic number” error? There’s nothing really magical about it. And, in the context of the Java “Virtual Machine”, it’s its way of telling you — in not-so-plain text — YOU LOSE.

No, you lose, Java.