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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.

Posted on

angry, resigned, jaded


I did write Sunday, but it was only this, and it wasn’t enough.

Sunday and… and… Oh Lord in Heaven I can barely stand to type it… and… I have to go to work tomorrow. It’s my absolute last day of this nine week vacation, and it’s a day of tears and anguish. I had planned, like a good conscientious homeowner, to mow the lawn today. But, when I got up to change into the ratty clothes I wear to cut grass, I had a sudden change of heart. Mow the lawn on my last day of freedom? I think not. No sir, I most certainly think not. You see, even knowing that today is very likely the last chance I’ll have to mow before next weekend (being that it’s gonna be dark after work now with the time change), I just couldn’t bring myself to sacrifice my last day to something so work-like. Instead, I want to read my book, listen to some Dylan, maybe take a nap after playing with Keaton – yeah, wide open.

After that the apathy overcame me, and I just gave up on posting for the day.

Today, however, was Monday (noobs: I write at night, the evening before I post, hence the date discrepancy) and it was my first day back at work. I look back on the day I wrote this entry, on my last day of work some two months ago, and it seems so far away… so why does my time off seem to have gone by so fast? I went into work this morning, and it was like picking up right where I left off. No gradual ramp into activity, rather a nose-dive into the same frigid waters of stress and deadlines. The shock of how quickly things got busy really surprised me. Then again, maybe I’m more overwhelmed than busy – I always have had a problem with trying to solve problems myself rather than let them be solved elsewhere. In some ways, I guess my coming back feels like a big inheritance of problems. I’ve gotten better, for the most part I can force myself to let those working for me solve the problems… but that temptation to jump in and run is still there.

Anyway, I’m starting to not make sense. Regarding my first day back: I thought it went extremely well. I wasn’t crushed by having to return, more like I slid right back into place. That in itself is kinda scary, like I’m so accustomed to work it’s like riding a bike… but it was also kinda nice. Actually, I felt like I got quite a bit “done” today – which is to say, I did a lot to understand what happened while I was out, and get myself back into the game. I know I was dreading it, and I can’t say I wouldn’t have rather lounge about the house reading, but, in the end, it really wasn’t as bad as I thought. Sort of like slamming into a brick wall with a seatbelt on, or something. And now the cycle begins anew: wake, work, family, sleep, repeat. I wonder how I’ll feel come the end of the week? A fellow worker said that his first three post-sabbatical weeks went: angry, resigned, jaded. After that, jaded was permanent. I’ll let you know.

Right now, though, Sharaun’s gone at some chef-kinda party, Keaton’s down for the night, and I’ve put on the Figurines’ latest album (which is no longer new at all) to give it another go. I loved their first album so much I just can’t seem to accept the fact that their follow-up didn’t do much for me. And, it does have some goodness, it just doesn’t hold a candle to their debut. Stinks. I hate it when that happens. The other night I TiVo’d a bunch of old black and white western serials off of the old-stuff channel, and I’ve really been enjoying then. The times when the kids of this nation were weaned on cowboy-‘n’-indian movies has always seemed like good times to me, not sure why. I figure it’s somehow good, from a cultural-history perspective or something, to know about the Trail Blazers’ spot in old-timey westerns.

Goooooood night.

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the streetlights come on in two days


Today (Friday) is the last day of my sabbatical. My last true day, although I do have the weekend before I have to actually punch a timecard again. It’s a sad day for me… the end of what now seems like an impossible dream that went way to fast. The non-working, still-paid, man’s life… the life that I fantasize about. But, alas, the life that just ain’t too realistic. And now it’s over. I guess all good things… bah… let’s do this.

Let me tell you about a time I was embarrassed (for no other reason than the story came to me). I think of it often, actually, as it was a fairly recent occurrence, and I think it does a good a job deflating me when my head’s grown too big for its own good. Here goes: For work, I had traveled to a customer site for an important “face to face” meeting between their higher-ups and our higher-ups. Of the higher-ups from my sawmill, I was the lowest-up; but I had a good handle on the pulse of a certain program which was likely to become a topic of conversation at the meeting, so I was included. We all sat in a larger room, seated randomly at a large table in the form a 3-sided square/horseshoe (carefully staggering ourselves so as to not appear a single “front” to our customer, gotta be aware of that, y’know!). I am a pooperface.

The conversation was driven off a presentation on the big screen at the front of the room, but was all largely organic and free-flowing, as presentations to higher-ups tend to be. At one point, the highest-up who’d traveled from the sawmill with me was making a statement about when our customer would get something we’d promised them, and that something was part of the program I manage. The highest-up said something like, “And, you’ll be happy to know that you should be getting ThingZ on….,” and paused as if thinking. Taking this as my cue, and thinking him pausing for the “expert” to jump in and not make him look like he was unaware of the date, I jumped into the conversation with, “I’m pretty sure your ThingsZ shipped on Friday.” What I hadn’t heard, however, was the highest-up completing his own thought shortly after his pause – I had spoken right over his own date with my own, unknowingly, thinking he needed help. The highest-up most definitely did not like this, and apparently took it for the lowest-up trying to trump his piece of good news. The date was earlier than our customer would’ve expected, and I’m sure he thought I was trying to clutch at the glory of that announcement.

Without even looking at me, the highest-up stated, in an arrogant, no-nonsense tone, “Don’t argue with me. I think I know my own ThingZs.” It was like he was a mother on the phone with a friend, and I a child tugging on her apronstrings whining “Mommy! Mommy!” That was the tone he used. I heard his words more like, “Shut up, you know-nothing underling, we all know who’s in charge here.” The words stung immediately, but I was able to react quickly enough to laugh out loud, hoping to play it off as some good-natured ribbing between coworkers. It worked, to a degree, the room joined me in laughing, as did the higher-up, perhaps slightly embarrassed himself at calling out one of his own ranks so in front of customers. Oh but did I replay that quip in my head on the flight home, feeling the snub every single time. Seems a small thing, I know, but it was terribly embarrassing at the time. It does me good to think on it at times, to reign in my ego, get my head in check – even if it was a mistake on my part and no real vie for notoriety. Still sucked getting called out, though…

Nerd stuff coming, beware.

Oh man… I found the coolest thing online today, by pure happenstance, too. Seems that my torrent client of choice, µTorrent, has a plugin called WebUI that allows you to access the client over any standard HTTP connection. I know, this seems kinda nerdy, but I’m’a tell you what it means here next. See, I use BitTorrent to download all sorts of things. Mostly legal stuff, of course, like live concert recordings from sites like archive.org, Dime, Tapecity, and the Trader’s Den, as well as TV shows Sharaun and I follow yet may have missed from sites like EZTV or shareTV. I’ve also occasionally used it to download a Linux LiveCD or two.

Anyway, suffice it to say that µTorrent is open on my home PC, sucking up my broadband on a regular basis. the WebUI plugin for µTorrent allows me to remotely login to the client software which is running on my home machine, from anywhere that has an internet connection, through the standard µTorrent port (which is open on my router). I supply a username and password, and I get a slick-looking web interface where I can manage all the torrents I’m seeding/leeching, as well as add a new torrent, delete a torrent, stop or pause a torrent, etc. You’d think this may be something you’d never want to do, but you’d be surprised when it may be useful to login to a torrent client and delete all your seedings every once in a while. WebUI is awesome. If I wanted to, I could find a cool new torrent online while I’m away from home, logon to µTorrent and add it, and it’d be waiting for me when I got there. Sweet.

I can’t believe I have to go back to work…

Oh, lord… I have to go back to work. It’s over.

Posted on

maybe get sick on candy


Happy Halloween friends and enemies! Let not your modern-day Protestant church rob you of the good times this holiday affords the world! Forsake that “Harvest Festival” or “Fall Celebration” for some good old trick-or-treating with a scary mask and some fake blood! Maybe get sick on candy like you were a kid again. If not tonight, when else?

Tonight (which is last night as you read this, should you know nothing about when/how I blog) Keaton sat on my lap and watched It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown with me (on DVD, of course, since it’s such a classic). To my surprise, she sat right down with me and truly paid attention. I think it’s because she’s able to recognize so many things: pumpkins, ghosts, the moon, a football, a dog, hats, trees, leaves, and mail – just to name a few. Her sense of recognition and memory impresses me on a daily basis, and her vocabulary, word usage, and phrase-building ability boggles my mind. She says things like “Keeper, out, room!” to the cat; “Daddy, reading, book,” to me; “Mommy, cooking, dinner, hungry, eat,” all together like she’s really trying to make a coherent thought. I know it’s like just the beginning of her “grouping” the words she knows around a single binding action or concept, but it’s still pretty amazing. Pretty much every day she says a word I hadn’t even thought she’d known… it’s pretty impressive.

I went to lunch with a fellow manager from work today, and even though I don’t start back there until Monday, I couldn’t help but use our time to begin gearing my mind for the return. I asked about the usual: what’s going on, how’s morale, how are the politics, who’s doing what, what’s coming up, what happened while I was out, and what of the latest rumors and soap opera goings-on. It was a good conversation, but, in the end, it more than reinforced my dream of winning the lottery Saturday night so I just don’t have to go in at all. I’ve waffled here before about my job – which I truly do enjoy, and feel I’m good at – but also on the other hand wouldn’t mind seeing being swallowed up whole by the Earth in some freak geological event. It’s a fine balance, a knife-edge thing of sorts. I fear, however, that I will be going back… that much, at least, is rather inevitable. And, if I’m to go back and continue to do well – I figured I better start those long-rested hamsters a’running again before I walk in on day-one. Sigh… it begins.

Tonight I watched most (not all, I’ll admit, as it began wearing on me) of the Democratic debate on MSNBC. Ugh… people… we’ve got another whole year of this. I don’t know that I can take it. I’m a fairly well-established social liberal, so I like to think I identify with the general current of thought of these people, their platforms. But man, I’m already weary. Anyone else share in my apathy? I hate how politics can just suck the life of out seemingly everything sometimes. Why, when I watch these people, do I take on such an air of doubt… why do I find it so hard to assume they are being honest? What have you done to me, George W. Bush? You’ve ruined me. You’re such a fucker. You’re a fucker and you’ve made me ashamed of my country’s truckballs-style John Wayne politics on the world stage. Ugh… another year.

Finally, before I go, a snippet from a recent interview with Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails frontman and a proponent of various forms of the “new thought” regarding music distribution), where he admits he was an OiNKer (see my earlier entry if the word “OiNKer” means nothing to you), and talks a bit about the former site:

What do you think about OiNK being shut down?

Trent: I’ll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world’s greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don’t feel cool when I go there. I’m tired of seeing John Mayer’s face pop up. I feel like I’m being hustled when I visit there, and I don’t think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc. Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that’s what’s such a difficult puzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it? People on those boards, they’re grateful for the person that uploaded it — they’re the hero. They’re not stealing it because they’re going to make money off of it; they’re stealing it because they love the band. I’m not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.

Man, that sure sounds like it was a cool website… too bad I never got the chance to check it out. In summary: I was never a member. But, if there was some some bizarro world in which I was – I most certainly would’ve only reveled in the site’s groundbreaking role in digital content distribution, and never partook in it’s tainted wares. I’m to straight and narrow to put my neck out there like that… don’t y’all know me at all?

Goodnight.

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Master Lieabout von Housebound, Esq.


A few times today and once last night I heard thunder; even saw lightning. I enjoy hearing it; it reminds me of the rainstorms we’d get most summer afternoons back in Florida. Back now from Hawaii, I settled right back into my pre-trip alter-ego, Master Lieabout von Housebound, Esq.. Today was spent reading, listening to music, wrestling with Keaton, and monitoring a few choice IRC channels. I know, I know… you (nor I) haven’t used IRC since, like, highschool, or something… but I have decent reasons (all legit and legally kosher, mind you). Anyway, Sharaun’s at the gym now and Keaton and I are dancing around to In Rainbows (I didn’t get to jam to it much in Hawaii and was getting the shakes). We like our alone-time, it’s good for our relationship and stuff.

If you’ll cast your memories back with me for a moment, you’ll perhaps recall that, before leaving for a week in the Pacific Islands, I had torn down my summer tomatoes and sown in a goodly sized crop of “winter” wheat – all part of some idea I got in my head about wanting to “understand” the real “cost” of a piece of bread. While I was away, modern suburban scheduled irrigation dutifully watered my crop for me – and, while drinking coconut-infused cocktails astride the pool in Maui, I often wondered if there’d be any noticeable growth upon my return. I hoped for growth, of course, results from untended efforts are some of my absolute favorite results, but I was careful not to get my hopes up. When we had finally pulled into the driveway, fetched the luggage and baby, and were walking towards the front door, however, I made sure to get on my tippytoes for a second so I could peer over that little dip in our fence where the gardenbox is visible. I was ecstatic the view greeting me home:

Not bad. Now we’ll see if it’ll make it to seed.

Moving on, I feel I would be remiss were I not to note the fact that today is All Hallows Eve Eve. If you’ve been following my blog here at sounds familiar for any length of time, you know I’m an absolute nut for Halloween – have been since I was a kid. Every year since we bought our house, I’ve constructed and displayed elaborate props for the occasion, and we’ve thrown an annual bash for the past four years. Originally I figured, with Halloween falling during my sabbatical this year, that I’d have even more time to repair the brokenness of last year and maybe even make some super fantastic new props. But, the way things landed: our week in Hawaii right up against my favorite of all holidays, the run-down state of the existing props, and me being worried about repeat thievery with a yardful of props and no one home – I just decided to blow the whole thing off. It sucks, and I’ve had three neighbors ask me what’s up… but I vow to be back next year with a vengeance. It just doesn’t feel like Halloween without all the preparation and work, I’m a beaten man.

Goodnight.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.