Category: travel

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should be a good week


It’s right cold here in Oregon, at least to someone who’s been enjoying unseasonable warmth in his own locality (y’know, that’s me I’m talking about). I arrived today and caught the train from the airport towards work, intending on catching the van at the end of the train which would take me the final miles to the local sawmill.

Turns out, through a miscalculation on my part, I had timed the whole domino of travel just wrong enough that I missed the last van, and had no way to make the final push to the cubicle farm. Instead, I got off the train near my folks’ place and began looking for a kind soul to give me a ride. When this fell through, and when the warm and dry comfort of my folks’ pace soaked into my bones, I decided I could do just as much in the remaining half of the day from the kitchen table with my computer and cellphone than I could at the office. And so, I waffled between the couch and table, watching the scant few e-mails trickle in – the holiday this week seems to have slowed things considerably.

Anyway, I’ll rise early tomorrow and dress warm so I can actually make my way into the office and get some things done. Sharaun and Keaton get here Wednesday, we’ll celebrate like Pilgrims and Indians makem-good-treaty on Thursday, and then fly home together Friday. It’s a quick trip, but it’ll be a good time to hang out. Oh, and, on Wednesday night we’re all (the young’ns, at least) going to see the Band of Horses play in downtown Portland. Should be fun, I haven’t been to a show here before, and haven’t been to one in general in a few months. Should be a good week… should be a good week.

I wore the jacket Sharaun got me last Christmas today, as I knew it would be cold in Oregon and it was somewhat chilly driving to the airport at 5am. It’s one of those sportscoat kinda things that people wear with jeans, but cut nice and a little fancy with its pinstripes on brown – I think the “real” word for it might be “blazer.” In fact, maybe you can tell me, as the post-accompanying image this day ’round is an ad featuring the exact jacket. Regardless of nomenclature, I’ve always wanted a “nicer” coat like that, and I only got to wear it a few times last year before the weather turned warm again. Today, I threw it on over some jeans, with some brown shoes and a lighter brown shirt underneath. Quite proud of what I’d done, I caught myself jamming my hands in my pockets, head down and slightly cocked as if there was a photographer rolling film while I waited in the security line at the airport.

With my little carry-on and laptop bag, and my iPod tucked safely in the inner breast pocket, I felt seriously dapper. Truth be told, the jacket is probably a bit mis-sized for me, as most bulk-made, three-sizes only, items tend to be, but I still feel like a million bucks in it. I know it’s a $100, somewhat ill-fitting, sweatshop-made thing, but when I put it on I feel mature, I feel established, I feel business. Funny, given how little I care about clothes. I’m gonna wear that thing out this week, so I’ll let you know if I get more phone numbers than I normally do, or perhaps more “sirs” when being spoken to. I’m sure I will, because… I mean… I’m wearing a damn blazer with jeans, people. It’s doesn’t get more haute couture than that, right?

Goodnight.

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who are you guys?


Another day at the fount-of-busy that is the sawmill. It’s hard for me to believe that this was only my third day back, like being dropped into a jungle thick with undergrowth and having to machete (as a verb, mind you) my way out. Stupid work, where’s my warm-up time? Where’s my trial-run? Where’s my mulligan? Anyway, I feel like I’m kicking butt. And, despite having had to go back to work to get that feeling – I kinda like it. You just don’t go home from a long day sitting on the couch reading a book thinking, “Yeah, I kicked ass today.” Then again, the ass-kicking means nothing to no-one, in the long-run. There, I think that’s sufficiently pro’d and con’d as per my style – never say anything, stay on the fence, the non-committal commitment. What?

Sometimes I wonder about people reading this blog. Do I know them? Do they know me? My stats tell me I also get a “decent” amount of daily traffic. I mean, check it out, here’s a snapshot of my daily traffic numbers over the past week or so:


sounds familiar visitors per day

Surprisingly, this graph says that sounds familiar averages between sixty and seventy unique hits a day. This is exciting to me. Sixty people a day? Who the heck are all of you? I know I get the random Google or Yahoo-referred visitor, who likely only stay to read what they came for and then move onto the next stop on the internet, and that these visitors can add up… but still, that leaves some percentage (I bet greater than fifty percent) of those ~sixty daily visitors who are real readers. Maybe not repeat readers, the basic stats package I have doesn’t go into that much detail (and even when I had StatTraq installed it wasn’t easy to track), but they are real people who at least alight here at sounds familiar whether by chance or will.

As an aside: I think it’s interesting that there’s an almost triple-traffic spike on October 29th – which is the day I wrote about two extremely internet-vogue items: the OiNK raid and the new Radiohead album. Seems blogging about current events can really boost your audience.

And, since we’re talking about my traffic patterns here at the old blog (because I can think of nothing else to write about), let’s back this thing out and take a look at visitors in week time-chunks:

Visitors per week.
sounds familiar visitors per week

Seems to prove out the sixty-seventy per-day thing, at least for the past couple weeks, but it also shows that, on the whole, traffic is on the decline from some sort of visitor heyday back towards the middle of the year. Again, the data seems odd to me. I mean, did I really have some three-thousand visitors back in the second week of June? The only thing I wrote about that week was the Santa Maria style BBQ Anthony I and built, and I can’t even get those entries to show up on Google with hand-picked keywords. Funny, but three-thousand visitors is totally intriguing. Wonder what what would happen if we zoomed out and looked at things from a month-chunk basis?


sounds familiar visitors per month

Holy crap what?! Hovering over that June 2007 peak on the live page tells me that it sits at 10,423 visitors. Ten-thousand?! What the crap? How is that even possible? Looking at this, I start thinking the 3,000 peak from the week-level graph may just be the downtrending “tail” from this huge early-June spike. So, what happened earlier in June or late May? On the 29th of May, I wrote about how my then host, StartLogic, sucked ass. That could draw visitors, I suppose. On the 31st of May, I mentioned the Arcade Fire show we attended in Berkeley, and linked to several popular Arcade Fire sites. I guess that could also pull visitors. I’m not sure, but it sure was fun to look at all this, was it not?

Oh, it wasn’t? Sorry.

Well, then, check this out. While this whole page about some cool things in China is neat-o, I’m linking it because I want you to scroll down to the big black box with the skull and crossbones that says “The Deadly South Peak.” There’s a written account there from a Western guy who hiked this trail in China, and the pictures and story are very well done. You have to see this trail to believe it. I checked, and the trip from Shanghai to Xi’an, which is about 75mi south of Mt. Haushan, is only a two-and-a-half hour flight and is relatively cheap. I’m thinking, “Hey, I go to Shanghai a couple times a year… maybe I should go climb this thing.” Man, would that be an adventure. An insane, ill-fated adventure on which I would likely kill or injure myself… but an adventure nonetheless. I think, if I could get someone to try it with me – it might be up for it. You down?

Goodnight.

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suddenly rudderless


Back from Hawaii, and today marks the t-minus one-week mark for my waning sabbatical. I gave up trying to post regularly last week, the draw of the beach and the pool and the nothing was just too strong. I wrote some here and there, but nothing good enough nor substantial enough to publish. Hawaii, though… Hawaii was great. Such a relaxing getaway, and a fitting “closer” for my nine week vacation. We all of us had a great time, and I look forward to going back one day. Anyway, I’m back, and the sense of dread about my return to the sawmill is welling within me. One week left means I need to start training my brain to think work again… to care again… to “turn on” again. I don’t think it’ll be hard to do, rather hard-fought to do. To be clear: If there was a way not to, I wouldn’t.

Well then, now that that’s out of the way, I’m going to bore you with a mostly music-related blog. But, before that stuff, I’d like to call your attention to a potentially equally ho-hum bit of news. Acting on a suggestion from one of my real-life readers, I’ve added a “view all comments by this person” feature to sounds familiar. Now, when you look at the comments on any post, you should see a link at the end of (nearly) each one which will allow you to view a page containing all the comments that user has ever made here on the blog. Unfortunately, the feature relies on a commenter’s e-mail address to pull the inclusive list – and we here at sounds familiar have never mandated that commenters include an e-mail address when commenting. But, I’ve worked to fix this retroactively by modifying the existing comments in the database to add e-mail addresses (where known) to existing posts from certain users.

Related: This also introduces another change for comments moving forward: the requirement of filling out the e-mail field. You can put a bogus address if you want, it’ll never be shown/shared anyway, even continue to use multiple usernames/aliases, but you do have to put something (and keep it consistent if you want to go back and re-read all your stuff someday). Anyway, it mostly-works now, and I’ll continue formatting and fixing it if I like it (I don’t like where the “View all…” link is butting right up against the comment end). Show me love if you enjoy. (Oh… and, if you’re curious, Pat has the most… at 98.)

Music. Let’s go.

The past few weeks sure have been an interesting few for online music-lovers. First, the Radiohead release, then, the OiNK takedown, and, finally, the leak of the Sgt. Pepper’s multitracks.

About Radiohead and In Rainbows, it looks like the band does plan to release official sales figures for their online album release – but not until sometime later this year. Estimates citing loose-lipped sources “close to the band” say that the average price paid was around ~$5 per download (including the $0 leechers, apparently), and that the band moved 1.2 million copies in the first 24 hours alone. It’s hard to actually guess at a take with such second-hand, not to mention dubious, data – but I bet the posted numbers will raise more than a few industry eyebrows in the end, especially since we’re talking about a much higher profit ratio than a “traditional” type record release. Should be interesting, stay tuned.

Next, I feel like I should write reams and reams about the takedown of the Pink Palace, but, having never, ever, been a member there, it’s hard for me to fathom the impact of the raid. I imagine that, for people who were unlucky enough to have been involved with the fabled music download site, the loss of such a resource must bring biting pain and a crushing sense of loss. I’d wager that those who illegally used the site to illegally download illegal music likely now feel suddenly rudderless, adrift in a sea of crappy P2P alternatives… with not a sound port to put into. I’m sure however, that something will rise to fill the void for those thieving types sooner or later – the internet is a dark world of crime and hate, afterall. Tsk, tsk, busted OiNKers… when will you learn that the only way to legally enjoy music is to trade money for physical product?

About the Sgt. Pepper’s multitracks, maybe you don’t care… but I do. Of course, for those born after 1967, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was the Beatles crowning achievement, their 8th LP, and, as some believe, the up-until-now pinnacle of rock ‘n’ roll altogether. While recording Pepper, the Beatles’ engineers “bounced down” their layered instrumentation into four separate recorded “tracks,” or tapes. These individual tracks, when played together, “make” the entire song. It’s the old-timey equivalent of today’s modern multi-track recording techniques. Well, somehow, some collector (not a Beatles collector, funnily enough) in England got ahold of the Sgt. Pepper’s four-track multis… and… of course, with the internet and all, they eventually wended their way into the tubes. So then, the isolated four-tracks for some of the songs are now floating around the leaky interweb, and people at home can easily load them into Garage Band or Audacity or CoolEdit and make their own true remixes of actual Beatles songs. It may seem boring, but, for me, being able to hear Ringo’s isolated drums and Paul’s isolated bass from “A Day In The Life” is amazing. I just hope the entire album’s worth of tracks leaks soon…

This week I’m a homebody, so I’ll try and get some pictures uploaded from our trip to Hawaii sooner rather than later, and the blogging should come at more or less its regular cadence again from now on. Thanks for hanging in there while I took my break, and I hope to see you around as we finish out another fine year of writing.

Goodnight.

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if i never work another day


Sunday in Hawaii. I debated over writing at all, labored over potentially ruining the “vibe” of the past couple days – but, in the end it seemed the right thing to do. I’m actually poolside now, committing that nerd’s sin of peering heads-down into my BlackBerry while vacation goes on around, and without, me. I don’t mind though, doing a quick lookaround I can see that I’m not the only technology-hobbled one here. But, I will use it as an excuse for brevity.

So, then, Hawaii: The trip here was a bit stressful, the flight long, the luggage plentiful and heavy, and the drive to the resort fraught with crawling traffic due to some roadside fire. However, the past two days have been nothing short of a relaxation goldmine. So much so that I find myself struggling to believe it’s actually been two days – time has been passing with a luxurious slowness, slipping by hour by blessedly long hour.

I sprung for a weekly rental rate on some snorkeling gear that first day, and am glad I did. Not but fifteen feet off the beach, which is not but a hundred feet from the room, the seafloor turns into a solid bed of coral. Stretching as far and wife as you can see are corals, crazy Discovery channel tropical fish, eels, turtles… It’s like swimming around in an episode of Nova. Now, Sharaun, who’s been snorkeling in Roatan, says that, despite how beautiful it is here, it’s not but a fraction of what she saw. It’s cool though, as we’re scheduled to do a “true” snorkeling trip Tuesday morning, and she expects I’ll be even more blown away then. I could go home happy just spending a few hours tooling around past the waves right here in front of the hotel. It really is something…

The week’s dancecard is filling up fast, with a luau and a dinner cruise, a snorkeling expedition and a “romantic” dinner, a trip ‘cross-island and glass after glass of overly-sweet rum-heavy drinks with slices of pineapple stuck to their rims. But still, I’ve managed to limit my wardrobe to a single pair of shorts and two shirts – and have worn nothing else save what I wear in the pool or waves (which is most of the day). I swear, if I never work another day…

There’s so much more I could write – but it seems pointless here when I could be doing nothing in the sunshine instead. Until later then.

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a day in a tent


Twelve and a half hours in the tent yesterday. Twelve and a half. In an hour after the doors opened and out when they turned off the lights and security came around to clear house. It was a day at Oktoberfest, to be sure.

We arrived at 10ish and barely got a space inside (we missed the holiday opening, which was an hour earlier than we expected). But, thanks to a sympathetic waiter and a begrudgingly accommodating German and his companion, we scored a wonderful spot directly beneath the bandstand. Soon, our German tablemates forgot all about the invading American host which was our party, and by noon we were fast friends.

As the day plodded on, the room got increasingly warmer and wetter, the collective heat of near 10,000 bodies permeating the air. We marched on through liter after liter and oompah after oompah as the long hours were filled with delicious beer, delicious food, and incredibly friendly people. Some of us outpaced others, but on the whole our party consumed a staggering fifty liters of beer. For you Americans, that means the eight of us (plus our two German tablemates) quaffed a standard keg and then some.

Surprisingly, the drawn-out day aided in setting a naturally moderate pace, and combined with the food breaks, I’m happy to report that everyone walked out under their own power and made it back to the hotel safely. And yes, it was a sound and welcome sleep that took us once there.

And now, as I thumb-blog these very words, we’re back at the tents again, sitting outside this time to escape the crushing sauna of indoors, each enjoying another fine liter of helles bier.

And so it begins again.

Shawn and I rode the roller-coaster, I tried my hand at the shooting game, and we all did some shopping for souvenirs. So far then, the day is good. With today being our Oktoberfest denouement, it seems a fitting close.

Until later then, please excuse the typos, and wish us luck at the tents.

Auf wiedersehen.