Now, however, the brew button won’t push in, so we have to break down and get a new one — which, it turns out, is not easy. WalMart only had ONE model, a flimsy Mr. Coffee job that if infamous for its easily breakable/warpable pitcher. Linens & Things had NO models — they said they were sold out, and Bed Bath & Beyond had only a bigger version of the Mister Coffee model, with a poorly designed pitcher: The filter basket was build in to the pitcher lid, so the pitcher had to be 50 percent taller than the amount of tea it would hold! Target was little better, having only a weird, expensive but off-brand model in addition to the too-big Mr. Coffee model.

There is a Hamilton Beach model that looks really good and which has gotten good reviews on Amazon, but none of the stores carry it.

And of course, the Salton machine like we have, and which worked well above and beyond the call of duty, isn’t being made any more.

What the hell is wrong with American manufacturing and retail these days? I guess this is why the economy is down the tubes.

Oh sure, all those stores had dozens types of coffee makers, many with bizarre and frivolous (and expensive) options, but iced tea drinkers barely get noticed.

That’s another thing my wife and I have in common, fortunately, that we don’t drink coffee, and consume lots of iced tea — this is a hot locale we’re in, after all, so cold tea does make sense.

So why the almost total lack of choices when it comes to iced tea makers??

Somebody’s missing a big opportunity here.

And now, some miscellaneous stuff, and let’s try to make this fast:

Thanks to our blogging friend Renny (whose weather is not near as hot as ours, being in Oslo) for being the only one to comment while I didn’t post for a bit. I appreciate it, Renny!

Renny recently posted photos of a Seafood Fair in his city, so go check it out!

Speaking of my blogging friends, Kim likes to take tours of state capitals and collect souvenirs, and thus one day last week or so we got a postcard from her from Little Rock. Thanks Kim! I’ll scan it in and post it when I get a chance.

She’s got one picture from her trip posted on her site now, but we’re looking forward to seeing more. (Hint, hint!)

Speaking of collectible snail-mail, my mom sent me a letter for the sole purpose of getting it postmarked with our town’s 100th Anniversary postmark, which I think was a one-day thing, and because which the town leaders the town’s leaders and movers-and-shakers (not necessarily the same thing) were tring to get eerybody to mail a letter to family out of town that day.

That too will be scanned in when time is found …

Speaking of noteworthy goings-on back home, I’ve mentioned in times past that ol’ college buddy The Spook was instrumental in helping make the first CD for country singer Jake Kellen a reality. This year, Jake (whose mom and aunt and uncles I went to went to school with, BTW) wrote and recorded a song for Spook for his birthday, and I was lucky enough to get an advance demo copy of the song, which is pretty funny, especially if you know the Spook.

Spook was going to call me to detail exactly how I would be allowed to distribute the song, but I haven’t gotten that call as of yet, so you Dear Reader are out of luck for now, but keep checking back.

Speaking of friends, another friend (and former co-worker) Todn8r has taken me to task for not commenting on the passing of comedian George Carlin.

Yes, yes, in due time; it’s just that Carlin fits nicely into a theme post I’m doing, so that is yet to come as well.

Speaking of former co-workers, my good friend Misty called on Friday to say that she had bid a fond adieu to Chucky’s Madhouse (my term of affection for what our old company has become), and she even found a job first so that she could leave on her own terms.

I’m so proud!

Speaking of jobs: I had a job interview last week! Woo-hoo! And this was for a job as the tech support guy for a mortgage insurance office. I don’t know if I’ll get it, since I didn’t immediately know some of the more esoteric network admin terms on the skills assessment test, but I have to say that the person who interviewed me was the most un-Catbert-like HR person I'’ve ever met — and that’s a GOOD thing.

And now for something completely different: Waterloo TV.

Anyway, gotta post something: I’ve previously mentioned Epic Fu, a fascinating, fast-paced video newsmagazine. EF recently was discontinued and given a facelift, and relaunched.

I think I remember liking this more before, but it’s still got the same edgy, energetic hostess, the same jump cuts, the same kind of piling on of lots of different subjects — my ADD loves it — and the same casual youth-cultural attitude (at one point she says, “I’m not just blowing smoke up your ass when I say this …” — now that’s what I call cutting edge journalism!), so I’m posting the latest three epiosdes for your amusement.

Enjoy!

Well, I’m happy to report that my debut in my regular slot as a DJ in Second Life went very well in spite of technical glitches (stupid Winamp ate one-and-a-half of my playlists just hours before the show) and accidents of nature (our power went off 15 minutes before the end of my show due to wind storms in our area).

Other than that, though, the music I picked to play was solid, I got a lot of great comments, and the club had a nice-sized crowd (mostly with people that *I* knew and asked to come, further illustrating my value as a DJ).

My “fan club” (okay, okay, it’s really just a mailing list, but still it’s a measure of my popularity) is up to 50 people now (after just one complete show!), and three more club owners are wanting me to do regular slots this week or next.

Ha! I knew that once I could finally get in to do a show, my musical tastes and networking skills would do the rest.

By the way, the picture above is my avatar (yeah, yeah, it’s based on the Japanese hipster kid, or harajuku archetype, because all the other male archetypes in SL are these big musclebound apes), but that’s not the club where I worked my DJ magic … yet.

I just wanted to post a shot of me posing in the smoking hot DJ booth of Club Orion, the club owned by Kelly Yap Studios in SL and the next club where I’ll be entertaining the masses, such as they are.

And because that picture didn’t do justice to the club or the booth, here’s a wider shot of my little throne room:

Pretty sweet, huh? It gives the illusion that I know what I’m doing …

Anyway, I need to get back to whipping my thousands of MP3’s into workable playlists …

What I haven’t mentioned is something that I’ve been angling to do in Second Life, but have encountered lots of foot-dragging and excuse-making.

This past weekend, however, I began getting more aggressive about my endeavors, and finally achieved my goal:

I’m an online DJ!

On Sunday, I was supposed to have a quick test of my connection at one of the many virtual dance clubs in Second Life (an Irish-themed club, at that!), but the scheduled DJ didn’t show up, so I ended up spinning tunes (figure of speech) for about an hour and a half. (Good thing I had already compiled a sizable playlist.)

And they liked me so much they decided to keep me!

Keira, the club manager, offered me the 5-7 (Pacific Time) slot on Thursdays, so I snapped it up. And today she messaged me that she wants me to do a special theme night on the 27th (we’re going to do a hippie night, but with more than just 60s music).

My playlist on Sunday, and pretty much every time I go on, will be a good mix of new music (the more accessible new alternative and indie music, like Panda Bear, LCD Soundsystem, Portishead, Foxboro Hot Tubs, Hem, and one of my personal favorites, The Go! Team), classic rock (mostly album cuts, not the singles that everybody’s sick of), and a few dance floor crowd-pleasers (like “Brick House” and “Jump Around” — I’m certainly not above pandering).

And of course, Weird Al. You can’t DJ in Second Life without Weird Al.

Anyway, it was exciting on Sunday to get back to my college roots, going back to playing DJ. I always enjoyed to take the graveyard shifts during finals week, when I could ignore the formats and play what I wanted. Usually I could count on the Spook to tap on the window about 3 a.m. and help me get the records on. We’d sit around drinking Cokes out of glass bottles and take calls from the few listeners up at those wee hours.

This feels a lot like that, except with technologies the way they are, I can chat with several listeners at once, get instant feedback, and they can shout out comments about the songs and discuss among each other. As a bonus, I can have listeners in all parts of the world.

Of course, this isn’t anything like having a real radio show. For starters, I’ll be DJing for audiences for about 20 or 30 people tops, and sometimes as small as three or four. Also, this job doesn’t pay, except in micro-tips — although at this particular club, all tips go to a charity, Project Children. (I like the donation aspect; I actually feel productive doing something as frivolous as playing music.)

Oh, and another bonus: I have a fan club!

Okay, okay, it’s just a mailing list group, but I’ve got 20 members so far, and they’ll have my DJ tag over their names while they’re dancing to the music I play.

Hey, I’m out of work; I’ll take my ego-boosts where I can find them.

Oh, and I get to play and promote my own original music!

So seriously, if you’re already on Second Life, come by on Thursday. Again, it’ll be at 5-7 Pacific Time (7-9 Texas time), and the name of the club is Nancy Blake’s West of Ireland.

I could use the attendance boost on my first time in my regular slot.

And tell the host you showed up because you heard the DJ is HOT …

Couldn’t hurt …

In addition to my job hunting efforts on the regular sites, my wife combs CraigsList for job listings. One day last week she found something that wasn’t a job exactly (though it did offer $20), but rather a chance to be in the audience of a pilot episode of a local talk show. I thought, Hey, I’d like to see how those are made, plus it’s 20 bucks, so I applied and got accepted.

Here are the high points:

1. They made us leave our cell phones and cameras in our cars! It’s Communism! I took my phone back, but kept my camera.

2. While we waited in the atrium of the building (with access to cold water and a wide variety of snack treats), I looked around at the facilities as best as I could. Apparently the place where the show taped produces a whole line of training and educational videos, specializing in the areas of security and first response. Near the entrance was a big, circular war-room type area, with lots of ceiling mounted monitors in a circle in the center, surrounded by curved desks for computer workers, and open to the waiting area via a glass wall. Also off the atrium was a small CNN type newsroom, also with the requisite wall of newsroom monitors in the background (one of the stories they were tracking apparently involved The Price Is Right) and the word NEWS in the mandatory Times Roman font repeated on the wall over the TV screens.

There were also some editing booths lining the atrium and visible via windows, one of which was in use, and a young woman was apparently trying to overlay the audio of a woman being interviewed (her video was on the right screen) with footage of an SUV pictured on the left screen.

Needless to say, I was in video-hobbyist heaven.

3, There were some delays, apparently due to not having enough audience members show up, so we were soon shuttled off to Audience Holding Pen #2, which seemed to be some kind of classroom area and which also doubled as the Toastmaster meeting room.

(Hey, I went to a Toastmasters meeting one time, and boy was I disappointed — not one damn piece of toast in the whole place!)

(Sorry, comedian’s reflex.)

ANYWAY: Got to talking to one guy named Dan — Hi, Dan, in case you’re reading this! (I gave him my blog card, of course) — and we got into a discussion of the future of free vs. premium content.

(My argument for free content is that in this Age of Bits, as opposed to the old Age of Atoms, value is determined not by scarcity but by abundance. This was outlined, of course, by Kevin Kelly in his seminal Wired article 10 years ago, and we’re still seeing that principle, The Law of Plentitude, unfold.)

And again we had water and snacks, with the addition this time of bananas.

(PS: Dan didn’t laugh at my Toastmasters joke either, just like you didn’t laugh at it.

4. Finally we were herded like the cattle we are into the taping studio — except that cattle aren’t scanned with metal detectors on the way into the corral.

That’s right, the bastards found my camera, and I had to take it back to the car.

We ended up sitting in the studio for about an hour before anything happened, and even then it was just warmup — but still, it was interesting. It started with local comic Craig Frasier (who I think worked with us in Comics On Tap about 10 years ago), getting the audience loose and laughing, and then the director came out to get sound levels, and a few fake reaction shots.

That was probably the wildest part: The got shots of the audience faking reactions. They had us laugh, and boo, and shake our heads in disgust — keep that in mind when you watch one of those talk shows.

5. Anyway, let’s cut to the chase:

They told us it would be a talk show on the order of Jerry Springer or Maury Povich, but, long story short, it turned out to be more like The Jamie Kennedy Experiment (or Punk’d, or Candid Camera) — in other words, an outlandish situation was put on and our reactions were caught on camera.

Except that several of us figured out that something wasn’t quite right early on: The set that was too small, the first guest who was barely controversial at all, the fact that the lines of the second guest (the setup, the actor posing as the outrageous individual) were on the teleprompter, the fact that the actor’s fake foreign accent was far from convincing …

In fact, when he first came out, he looked to me exactly like Michael McDonald — no, not the mush-mouthed lead “singer” that killed the Doobie Brothers, but rather the MadTV actor. He looked just like McDonald’s character of Stewart, the creepie overgrown child.

In fact, here’s some video of Stewart in actin, in case you’re unfamiliar:

ANYWAY: I don’t think it was actually Michael McDonald that I saw, because I think this guy was too young. I also think he wasn’t ugly enough to be Jamie Kennedy (hey, I’m just saying), although the nose was almost big enough.

But it was certainly the kind of thing Kennedy used to do on his show, and all his lines had over-the-top comedy writing all over them.

So it absolutely was not the real thing, but some of the other folks in the audience didn’t seem to catch on.

The only thing is, they didn’t even tell us, “You’ve been X’ed!” or “You’ve Been Punk’d!” or anything else to that effect. That’s probably because they had to retape that night, and wanted all different audience members (they sent me another email, saying that people who weren’t at the first one were desperately needed for the night taping). Maybe too many of us caught on, or maybe they weren’t satisfied with the actor’s lack of convincingness, or maybe they wanted a version without the audience fanning themselves because it was so miserably hot in the studio.

But anyway, it was a great experience, and I made some new contacts I can use with my job search.

Plus I got 20 bucks.

The gang’s all here!

Also, my wonderful ex-co-worker Misty sent me an email and an Amazon gift card, and my former supervisor (Elma, the good one — not Daffy, the blithering idiot) sent me a birthday card AND called me.

As the family goes, I got cards from my mom, my wife’s mom, and my Aunt Lucille.

And then there’s the automated emails I got from the various message boards and other organizations I’m registered with: KDGE-FM, FileFront Network, My Coke Rewards, BuddyTV Forums, SlickDeals.net, Family Tree DNA, Tech Support Guy Forums, and Ubuntu Forums (those Linux folk were the first I heard from).

Of course, it could be said that the robo-greetings don’t mean as much as the personal ones, but seeing them all at once makes for an interesting portrait of my interests.

Plus, it’s better than no greeting at all, which what I got from a lot of the humans I know, almost a whole week after announcing it.

But it was a good birthday, my wife always works hard to make sure of that. We went to see Iron Man (excellent movie, more about that later), and took some pictures of the promotional stuff in the lobby (my wife is seen here with her new special friend), then we went to the Outback Steakhouse (overpriced, but we had a gift card that someone had given her a couple of years ago, and that we wanted to use before it unexpectedly expired, as those things tend to do).

The only downer to the birthday was that I had a bit of a sunburn from our two-day pre-birthday yard sale (pictures of that some other time) that we had with our friends Stephen and Deb. Even my scalp was sunburned, and I hadn’t sunburned in years.

But on the up side of the yard sale: You know how when you have a yard sale with other people, you always end up with each other’s stuff? Well, we mostly refrained from that, with one notable exception. Stephen was getting rid of a slightly defective bike, and since nobody expressed interest, they gave it to me as an early birthday present (don’t worry, we’ll make it up to them).

So: Instead of my nightly power walks, I’ve been cutting my time in half by biking around the neighborhood. Of course, having not been on a bike in something like 18 years, I’ve got a minor case of bike-seat butt, but the bike is easier on my tendonitis.

And lastly, on my birthday night some of my Second Life acquaintances came up with a simulated birthday cake on the dance floor, and the let me win two best-dressed contests, so that was a nice end to the day. I think I’ve got screenshots of that somewhere too.

Anyway, that was this year’s birthday, and thanks to everyone for your wishes!

More later, but for now, I gotta crash …

1. Since the job I interviewed for is so contingent on my web networking skills, I’ve been spending even more time on those types of sites, including Second Life. If you’ve never experienced Second Life (and I’m really shocked at the number of friends of mine who have never heard of it, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It’s free, and surprisingly it’s not very hardware intensive. He’s a screenshot of one of my favorite hangouts:

2. The new Iron Man movie looks cool, but we’re waiting until Monday (5/19) to go see it.

3. Since I still can’t get my Creative Zen up and running, I got a temporary solution of a 2 GB Sansa Clip (that was on sale) for my evening power walks … except that the music I’m loading on it doesn’t show up. The troubleshooting guide suggests that it might be some DRM crap stopping the files from showing up.

So that’s still up in the air.

4. Lately I’ve gotten hooked on the Discovery Channel’s taxicab quiz show, Cash Cab. It’s amazing how little knowledge New Yorkers can get away with having and still survive in the big city …

Still though, it’s nice to see a game show where the contestants weren’t hand-picked by some control freak producers who thought they would look appropriate on the show. These are just ordinary people who needed a cab ride, and happened to pick the one with the rolling quiz show on board. Bonus points: On today’s show, they had two Nixon related questions. One was about who replaced Agnew as Vice President (duh!), and the other was the name of the cocker spaniel (again: duh!) that Nixon talked about in a televised 1952 speech to try to get public support for his place on the Republican ballot.

5. Oh, and speaking of Nixon’s historically significant dog, I’ll probably be finally giving the links to my RPM Challenge songs very soon. (What does one have to do with the other? Some of you already know, the rest of you will soon see.

Anyway, go to the Cash Cab link above and try your knowledge against some sample questions.

6. My friends will be tested in the next week. I can’t say what the test is, because that would defeat the purpose, but I dropped a subtle hint somewhere above. (I’m hereby exempting Kim, Pam and RennyBA from this test, because they’ve already proven their loyalty by posting comments here on a regular basis. I’m also exempting my wife, of course. But the rest of you are walking a thin line …)

7. And finally: Here’s something new you can try, just in case you haven’t already seen it: When you’re reading a message board, or you’re in a chatroom, and somebody says something incredibly stupid, all you have to say in response is:

[facepalm]

People who know what it means will know that you’re hip and smart, and those who don’t can just Google it.

You’re welcome.

I had saved this video some time ago, but YouTube is on the fritz tonight, so it might or might not be visible when you’re reading this. At any rate, it’s pretty funny, and cleverly illustrates the facepalm phenomenom:

But, as I said, that was another lifetime, and since then I have enjoyed a peaceful, sheltered existence in the far suburbs. The hazards of the asphalt gauntlet have become but a distant, hazy dream — until today.

Today I found it necessary to brave the city’s gaping maw once more, as I was tasked with one of the seven Holy Quests: Interview for the Job.

======================================

But seriously: Recently a corporate H.R. specialist that we know, the daughter of my wife’s co-worker, was giving me some pointers on how to polish my resume in order to better get a job, or at least an interview.

Her chief recommendation: Make no mention, ever, that I have a blog. If the word “blog” comes up in conversation, I’m supposed to say, “What’s a blog?”

She said something along the lines that not only have blogs never helped anyone get a job, but that merely bringing up the subject of blogs would cause most Human Resources people to accuse me of being a witch or some other kind of creature with unsavory ties to the supernatural.

Okay, maybe that’s not quite what she said, but that’s how I remember it.

I usually try to downplay my blogging on my resume anyway, unless communications skills are somehow part of the job requirement, but either way it hasn’t seemed to help.

The reason I bring this up is because my interview today was for a job in which not only did I not have to hide my five-year track record of blogging, but it was actually an integral part of why they wanted me!

Even more interesting is the fact that the interview was not for a blogging or writing job, but for a corporate job in which social networking played an integral part.

Suddenly all these years of rattling on about trivial stuff, of posting pictures of mundane things, of posting on forums about Lost and Survivor and Elder Scrolls, of playing a wood elf druid, and, more recently, churning out quirky videos and music and dog pictures, have finally reached a critical mass and are considered to be a web presence.

‘Bout freaking time.

As for the interview itself, it was exhilarating to be, for once, elaborating on my blogging techniques and on web theory as it applies to social networks. This was the first time ever in my life that a boss or potential boss was listening to what I knew on the subject and actually understood the words coming out of my mouth.

I’m not sure a work authority figure has ever actually achieved the listening part of that equation with me before, much less tried for understanding.

Whether I actually impressed the interviewer to a sufficient degree is still to be seen, but I’m just thrilled that we were able to have that particular conversation without him looking at me like I just flew in from Mars and said, “Must kill all humans!”

Sometimes the little victories are the sweetest.

First of all I’d like to thank my friends Kim and Pam for already noticing I’m back without me even telling them, and to Renny, who didn’t know I was having problems, but who kept checking back anyway, and left two comments during the month while I couldn’t post anything.

And also a big thanks to Joni of WordPress forums for helping me troubleshoot and get back online.

I had more to post, but I have to go get ready for a job interview tomorrow (did I mention that?), so here’s what I don’t have time to talk about tonight: My adventures in Second Life, my music getting circulated around (I have my own ringtones! Woo-hoo!), developments in various shows, and my job interview tomorrow.

Bet you can’t wait.

And again, for no apparent reason.

%$@#.

SO anyway, I’m back, and have a few things to post, and hopefully I will, assuming I don’t get %$@#ed around again.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SPOOK!

Okay, actually, it’s tomorrow (Friday the 11th), but I have to do it now so that he can actually SEE it on time.

In case you’re just tuning in, The Spook is my old college buddy, who sometimes checks in here and comments, and used to send me cool stuff to post, like pictures of the huge pistol-shaped barbeque grill that he designed (Google it, you’ll find it).

So click on the comments box and leave him a happy birthday wish.

Next thing:

I’ve had a really intriguing job interview this week — a well-funded startup that can mold a position around my exact skills, and it would probably be a manager position — and even got called back for a second interview, but for some reason I’m still not entirely hopeful.

Next: You’ve probably heard about the LOLcats phenomenom, also known as the I Can Haz Cheezburger phenomenon (again, Google-image it if you’re not familiar), and now, a couple of years after the fad hit its peak, I’ve finally decided to jump on the rickety old bandwagon and make one of my own:

Again, if you’ve been reading here for a while, you’ll know this is Schotzy, our pomeranian that passed on in July 2006, and this is just one more excuse for me to post this picture again.

And finally, speaking of Friday (I was earlier, keep up, slacker), this is hilarious:

Cincinnati news folks get down and/or funky:

(Via Attack of the Show.)

I wanted to post this while the posting’s still good: As of last Sunday, I’m below 190 pounds (189.8, to be exact) for the first time since the months following my surgery two years ago. At any rate, my size 36 khakis are fitting nicely, and maybe even a bit loose. That means I’ve now got about 12 pairs of khakis that fit, and three really loose ones.

The amazing thing is I’m losing weight while unemployed — that is, while having too much time on my hands, time that could be used sit around and stuff my face. I’m also surprised since the past four months were not only the coldest of the year (when it’s toughest to get outside) but also the most fattening.

But I’m managing to keep to my walks almost every day, since we’ve had lots of warm days lately, and I’ve been keeping my daytime meals small, so that seems to have done the trick.

The only problem is that my wife reminded me that she doesn’t like skinny men, so I’d better not overdo it.

So I had some ice cream and she feels better about it now.

Yesterday morning we discovered that the TV in the computer room was totally dead (probably a dead power supply).

And what’s a computer room with a TV? NOTHING, that’s what! A BIG FAT GOOSE-EGG-LIKE ZILCH!

So anyway, I went out to check prices on TV. But since there were storm clouds rolling in, we checked the local news stations for the weather. The local CBS weather guy said, “We’ve got a few little clouds up in Denton county”, that’s where we live, “but what we’re really concerned with is down here in Burleson” (60 miles to the southwest) “where this situation could easily spawn tornadoes”.

So I went on to WalMart, and as soon as I was back in the TV department, my wife called on my cell phone and told me that the tornado sirens were sounding. “You don’t hear them?” she asked. “I hear about 40 TVs, and piped-in music. I’m toward the back of the store!” Nobody else in the store was panicking, so I wasn’t going to perform solo. I just figured stick close to the sturdy looking shelving, and the second anything hit the building, I’d have an edge on ducking under it.

As soon as she heard the sirens, she grabbed her purse and the phone and a flashlight, and herded Bristol and Molly into the bathroom, then called me to see if I had pulled a Dorothy yet.

Anyway, nothing happened, but I learned I can’t trust the local weather wizards to know what’s going on.

Anyway, enough about life and death matters, back to what’s really important: Replacing the TV in our computer room. I found a passable small Samsung at WalMart, but we wanted to check at our local resale store before spending the big bucks.

Long story short: I found a fairly recent model 20″ Panasonic for $9.99.

It’s a combo TV/VCR and the VCR part doesn’t work, and they didn’t have the remote …. but hey, NINE NINETY-NINE!

It actually took some work to get working — and in this case the tech support guru was my wife, who sacrificed a fingernail to freeing the VHS tape (Star Trek, The Original Series) that was stuck in it, and then stopping the tape ejector mechanism from making a constant clattering sound — and more work to get it programmed — again, it was my wife that found the solution on the internet, and without losing a fingernail this time — so there was indeed some “sweat equity” involved …

But hey: NINE NINETY-NINE!

We got an $8 remote at Dollar General — again, my wife’s doing (this could give a geek a complex) — and now we’re back up and running, entertainment-in-the-computer-room-wise, so we’re happy.

Yes, we’re partying like it’s $9.99.

I was supposed to bring this up on Monday, but better late than never: Go to Renny’s site to see how they celebrate April Fool’s Day in Norway.

(Click the picture to view the large size for full effect.)

Well, I finally did it: I finally broke down and checked into Second Life. I heard about it a couple of years ago, but never really got motivated to check it out, and lately I’ve been hearing that it’s over the hump, and was never really all it was cracked up to be.

Besides, I’ve done the Everquest thing, so I know how involving those virtual worlds can be, and I needed to put my time into other projects..

And I’ve done the There.com thing, so I also know how UN-involving virtual worlds can be. So I blew it off.

But now, Second Life happens to be intersecting with one of my other projects — and it’s free, and I’m unemployed, and on Friday it was an alternative to driving an 80 mile round trip — so I finally took the plunge.

As it turns out, it was a great time, both Friday night and all day Saturday, with several RPMers and even a few civilians gathering their avatars in a virtual nightclub and having those avatars boogie down, as shown in the above picture, to music that WE wrote and recorded.

A great feeling it is, to see people (virtual in this case) dancing to your music.

The dancer in this case is not one of the fellow musicians, but rather a lady named Mazzie from Australia. (I’m posting this particular picture because she didn’t believe that her normally silver outfit was giving off a distinctly green hue for an hour or so.)

I also promised several people a shout-out, including Mazzie, Gwenette Writer (another non-RPMer, but something of a mover-and-shaker within Second Life), Fence Flatley (our DJ for the evening and an RPM musician in Omaha, whose artist name is One Inch From Midget), Ruby’s Cannon (who wrote me a very complimentary email about my music), Jigjaw from London, England, Sister Savage from Bristol, England (I told her, “We have a dog named Bristol!”)
and … well, I can’t remember the others right now, but there were lots of us, and lots of strangers getting exposed to our music.

Oh, and Domestic Science wasn’t there at the party, but she also gave me a nice compliment about my music in an email, so I’m giving her a mention and a link as well …

Go to the RPM Jukebox, click Library, and check out these artists and others. You’ll be glad you did.

(Note to old college buddy Terry: Find Ruby’s Cannon in the Jukebox and listen to their stuff, especially 442, and see if it reminds you to Pat Travers.)

But if you really want to hear my songs, you can look in the jukebox for a song called “Ferriswheel”; that and the other songs on that album are mine.

But you’ll have to earn it.

While you’re at it, search for Dogs Are Weird, by Emergency Pizza Party. It’s a funny little nerdcore group rap (and no, it’s not about dogs at all, it’s about food; long story).

And just generally browse the jukebox and listen around. The amount of creativity and great material that came out of this one month is staggering.

The worldwide listening parties were today, but the one for the DFW area wasn’t centrally located (i.e., an 80-mile round trip for me), so I blew it off and watched the live webcast from New Hampshire. It was fun chatting with other RPMer’s in the chat room (a lot of whom I knew from the message boards) and watching as the guys in NH moved the camera over the table with all of our CDs.

The NH guys asked us to tell them where we were, and they were amazed at the varied locations: Texas (3 of us in the chat room), Pennsylvania, and several from Ireland and England.

There’s another live listening party later tonight in Second Life, so I finally bit the bullet and signed up for that after all these years of resisting.

Anyway, check out the songs; I’m going to get back to it now …

Hmm … looks like I posted something after all … oh well …

Most illogical.

So, long story short: Eight hours and a 30 pound monitor hauled in from the garage later, I finally got the #$%@&*# $#@*#&-%&$*#@% thing working again.

The problem turned out to be a loose 12-volt Molex.

It’s always the most obvious thing.

But seriously: When I installed my shiny new power supply last summer, I noticed that the new 12V tendril didn’t snap into place, but I just figured it was a problem with the plastic part of the new connector.

Tonight, though, when I realized that it was the only one of the many loose power tendrils that shouldn’t have been loose, I borrowed some of my wife’s many pieces of jewelry-examining equipment and confirmed my suspicion that one of the pins was bent.

So I bent it back.

It’s the feel-good story of the year.

So here I am, able to be ‘putering again. Lucky you.

And now I’m going to go back to getting the USB thing working now.

That oughta hold ya until next year …

After all, Norway’s Vikings founded Dublin, so they’re understandably proud, and want a little credit for themselves.

Bonus points: It’s an excuse for beer!

Anyway, check it out, and then check back here, because I think I’ve got a couple more posts in me …

Keep coming back, there’s more!