DIARY OF A TROUBLED LONER: June 2001 |
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Friday, June 1 2001
I did the same as yesterday, working on the U2 Detroit audio as soon as I got up. I got word from MIke about our Buffett trip tomorrow; we planned on leaving around seven AM. We only had stupid Lawn tickets so we'd need to get there early. I relayed the info to Patti. I stopped at Office Depot on the way to work, to pick up CDR stuff for my U2 project.Dennis told me I needed to call our company in Atlanta and discuss paying buck the income I'd been "doubly paid". If I did not soon my paycheck would be docked. The HR person had been out yesterday but I reached her today. It was decided I preferred having my paycheck docked. This would happen over two pay periods. It felt better than just writing a check for the whole thousand. Almost by accident I discovered someone was selling my recording of the U2 Toronto on eBay! They'd downloaded the MP3s and made audio CDs of them. I could tell it was my recording since they apologized that some of the first song was missing. I didn't know if I should be pleased or miffed. I called up Patti and we discussed our plans for tomorrow. I continued work on the U2 audio when I got home. I wanted to start encoding and uploading the MP3s by tomorrow, so I could get it done before the big Buffett trip, but this turned out to be pretty impossible. I at least got both CDs done. In the meantime, I started packing for the Buffett road trip. It had pretty much been decided this would be a two day trip, plus it was supposed to rain tomorrow, so I brought a variety of clothes. Saturday, June 2 2001
I got up at around five and showered. I finished my packing, including a cooler for Patti and a cooler of water and diet pop for myself. It was very cloudy outside, and it was so dim (and so early) it reminded me of tailgating at the U of M football games. I had to keep reminding myself it was June, and there was no need to bring longjohns and sweatshirts and layers of clothing. I was impatient to get going; I arrived at Patti's house, down the street from me, before six. Luckily she was already on the move too, collecting some lawn chairs from her garage. I made a pit stop at the nearby 7-11 for a bag of ice (and some Cold Eez. They didn't have any so I got Dayquil instead); and then we were off.I think Mike and I had discussed leaving by seven, but we arrived at his house right around then. He wasn't ready anyway. He was still loading up the van -- plus he had to pick up the babysitter, since his wife was already at work. It was nice not to have to drive. I felt like I was a veteran of these trips, having already gone through five of them. But it wasn't till we were already underway that one important and seemingly obvious fact dawned on me: we'd be crossing into another time zone. After all our talk about wanting to leave early, it wasn't till now I realized we'd be gaining an hour when we got to Chicago! I thought Mike had researched the route, so I assumed I was in good hands, but it turned out he was relying solely on a print-out from Yahoo's map site. It didn't seem all that detailed, especially once we passed Chicago. As we'd discussed, Mike found a route that avoided Chicago, but it turned out to be a toll road. It seemed strange to us to have tolls on an Interstate, but that's what I-294 had.
The weather was terrible. It was very chilly and it rained continuously. It reminded Mike and me too much of our road trip to Buckeye Lake where another Buffett concert had turned into a sodden muddy mess, back in 1995.
Many miles later we wondered if the old ladies were tittering over their tea, having pulled one over on the tourists. We kept heading west on this flat and open road without any kind of sign to encourage us on. At last Patti spotted a ski lift on a hill far off to the left. This seemed somewhat "Alpine Valley-ish", but the hill seemed too far from the road. Finally we saw a structure to the left, a wooden archway that said "Alpine Valley". Two guys were standing in front of it. Mike pulled into the driveway and was told that this was the Alpine Valley Resort; the music venue was a few miles further along. We felt sorry for those poor guys, having to stand out there in the cold and keep people out; and we couldn't help wondering if perhaps a sign might've done the job just as well.  We were in for a surprise when we finally got to the gates of the Alpine Valley Music Theatre. The folks on the Buffettnews message board had said the gates open at noon. It was 12:45 now, local time, but a sign out front said the gates open at 3:00! Also, despite our worries, we were hardly the first people there. A line of cars stretched out in the oncoming lane, heading from the west. Some workers were standing out front, and Mike found out the gates would really open 1:30. Mike surged forward, making a U-turn to put us at the back of the line. And we sat around for roughly forty-five minutes before we could get in.  It was so cold out it really did feel like we were tailgating for a U of M football game. I'd brought my U2 "Elevation" sweatshirt just to show it off, but I ended up wearing it -- along with layering on all the clothes I'd packed for tomorrow! Undaunted, all the Parrot Heads around us partied as if under balmy skies. We couldn't get over how one group had filled their pick-up with bags of ice. Ice seemed quite unnecessary today; but there was method to their madness, we found, since they filled up an inflatable pool with the ice and turned it into a giant cooler.
 Beyond the trees which lined our field was a whole different field, filled with a sea of huge buses and RVs. We wended through it and came to the fence which blocks off the venue. A worker standing around told us the gates might open at four; he also pointed out the peak of the stage roof. I'd thought the brown buildings near us might be the backstage area, but in fact the stage was facing us, though sunken out of view. While we were here, we bought our souvenirs in advance. We secured our bragging rights, since no one at home would be able to get any Beach Odyssey shirts or caps this year. (Too bad the designs look so much the same as before.) We headed back to our van, to our paltry little tailgate, and to put on a couple more layers of clothes.  We headed back to the gates at around four, finding out they'd really open at six. I was alarmed to hear a recording saying that patrons would be subject to "a pat-down search" upon entering the venue. Since Buffett broadcasts his shows on the Internet to one and all, it seemed ridiculous he'd mind if I made my own audio tape, but I was nevetheless a little taken aback by this information. The whole reason I'd come here was so I could continue my streak of uploading concert excerpts to my Buffett page. I always seem to have bad luck when I record out of state, and that trend seemed to be returning. I'd had such good luck with U2 that I guess I'd gotten cocky. And now I was having second thoughts about the whole thing. It might've been simply due to the fact that I was already in a bad mood because of the cold, but I was ready to chuck it all and not even bother taping. Mike tried to talk me into chancing it anyway, but as far as I was concerned there was no point in trying to smuggle my stuff in -- especially under the threat of a pat down search. I had to smuggle in mics, my DAT recorder, plus my bass roll-off filter; there was no way all three could get in under close scrutiny. Mike at least took my microphones, saying he'd just tell Security they were a hands-free unit for his cell phone. This still left with me a large recorder and filter box to smuggle in. We hung around the gates, waiting to see if Security actually would search people. I held back, waiting to see what these searches looked like. I spotted the VIP line going in first; and sure enough each patron had to hold their arms out while a security person crouched and patted them down. If the VIPs were getting searched then there seemed no hope for me. I gave up and headed back to the van, although truth be told I'd probably made up my mind already. I got a chance to use a nearby portajohn too, which was horrendously filthy inside. I dumped off my stuff in the van and then headed back to the gates. By the time I returned the line for the Lawn had disappeared; I could walk right in without waiting. I was asked if I minded being searched; I held my arms out and the guy patted my waist...and that was it. He didn't come near where I would've hidden my gear, so I would've been able to smuggle my stuff in after all! That seemed fitting for a day which was already turning into a major let-down. I met up with Mike near a beer stand, as planned, confessing how there'd be no concert tape to listen to this year. I was surprised to see only portajohns set up inside the venue, lining the fences surrounding the concourse. I could understand portajohns in the parking fields, but the fact that the only bathroom facilities inside were portajohns too was raher disturbing. What kind malaria would we be spreading, with germs going from soiled hand to money to food vendor? Patti had secured a decent spot on the lawn, I was told, so we trudged down to our spot. The Lawn seemed steep enough at the top, but it kind bowled near the bottom...so much so that the people in front of us seemed higher. This became apparent when we all stood and the stage was completely blocked from view. I could barely make out an occasional musician between people's shoulders, but for the most part I had to rely on the video screens. The one on the right kept going out, showing solid blue for quite a while. I felt sorry for those people, who were stuck without any kind of view -- only to have the same thing happen to me. The center screen went out a few songs in, and stayed out for the remainder of the first half of the show.  This, in a word, was bullshit. We'd driven all this way for nothing. I couldn't see a thing and even the sound was horrible. It was loud enough, but the audio was very blaring and brash; the high-end keened so sharply I could feel it in my eyeballs. I was wet, I was cold, I was getting sick from some frat boys' stinky cigars. So, as the band took an intermission, I decided to leave. I actually walked out. In the old days, such a thing would've been unthinkable, but I was so disgusted by this whole misbegotten day that I asked Mike for his keys and I took off. The walkway to the concourse was covered by people; I wasn't even sure I was on it, but I followed a live of people struggling to walk upstream. It seemed to take forever to finally reach level ground. Once on the concourse I couldn't believe the number of people who were also filing out. There weren't just a few people heading back to their cars, there was a steady stream of people disgorging out onto asphalt. I knew I could not gain readmittance, but I figured I might still be able to tape something anyway. The music had been loud enough that I figured I could at least catch one or two songs from the woods outside the music shed. I headed back to the van, gathered my gear up...and suddenly realized Mike still had my microphones. They were in his jacket pocket. I headed back to the venue anyway, still seeing a steady stream of people coming out. It turned out I wouldn't've been able to record anything anyway: the buses and RVs in the nearby lot were revving loudly, and that stupid recorded message about pat-down searches was still sounding from the PAs. What had been loud on the lawn barely made its way up to the parking lot. Without any distactions, I was able to concentrate more on the people issuing from the venue. They looked bleary, zombie-like, staggering so badly they had to cling to companions to keep from pitching onto their faces. This then was a Buffett audience. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the people who worked at Alpine Valley, having to deal with or having to clean up after such a pathetic looking lot. A man near me was using a pushbroom to pile up broken bottles, while nearby some jackass was too out of it to know he was walking through this in barefeet. There was no point in hanging around since I couldn't even hear the show, so I went back to the van again, for good. What I'd seen had sickened me. This whole damned day had me questioning whether any of this crap is worth it. Buffett sings the same songs every year, with the exception of a precious few; and were those few minutes really worth the effort any more? It felt like I'd completely wasted my time in coming here, and what was worse, I'd dragged my friends along too. I hung out by the van, having some beers and snacking, and waiting for Mike and Patti to return. A few cars down some girl was effusing about some handmade kite she'd bought earlier from some guy in the parking lot. She simply would not shut up about her stupid kite. Mike and Patti ditched out before the encores. We were able to find a pathway out and was soon quite near the exit. Patti however begged Mike to pull over. As if channeling the after-concert spirit of Steve, she suddenly felt ill. We sat on the side of the roadway to the exit, waiting for her to come back in the van. Just like Steve, she had no reason for the sudden nausea; she hadn't drunk or eaten too much, she just started feeling queasy when the van moved. It seemed like all the cars were turning left, which seemed odd. We needed to turn right, we knew, but once we finally merged back onto the roadway and approached the exit we saw to our disbelief that the cops were forcing everyone to turn left! We had no idea what was to the left, our directions did not mention anything on the left. A sign ahead showed our choices as being Milwaukee to the north or Chicago to the south. We headed south, getting onto I-43. Chicago was somewhere out there ahead of us, and that was about the extent of our knowledge of this route the cops had dumped us on. We approached a town called Develan. Mike spotted a Holiday Inn sign and got off the expressway. We waited while he went inside and tried to get a room. We weren't surprised to find out the place was booked, but the woman at the front desk was helpful enough to call to other motels in the area as well as to explain to Mike how we could take I-50, which we'd just passed, east to Kenosha. At least we could head to somewhat more familiar ground. Mike got his chance to get a room at Kenosha, but once we got there we find out it was easier said than done. I'd talked Mike out of arranging for a room this morning, figuring it wasn't necessary; but now every motel Mike went to was full-up. Mike pulled up to every single motel we could see, getting the same story. It seemed unlikely the whole town had been overrun by Parrot Heads, but the only excuse Mike was given was that there were a lot of weddings going on this month. One motel only had a conference room empty, meaning we could sleep on couches. Another one had a "blue-tagged" room available, which meant its bathtub didn't work. Finally, at the very last possible hotel we could've checked, we found there was one room available at a Super 8. Mike took a bed, Patti took a bed, and the manager wheeled a cot in for us. I tried to open it, but it turned out to be too big! It was too long to open up; I could've wheeled it closer to the door, but then I'd be blocking the bathroom. So Mike and I started redecorating, moving the leftmost dresser in front of the right one and creating enough room for me to sleep. Sunday, June 3 2001
I'm not sure why we didn't get that one room with the broken bathtub, since none of us bothered about washing up. We crashed at night and then were in a hurry to get going in the morning. (Then again, that room had been at an expensive Executive Suites.) We at least had beds to sleep in, but our room hadn't been that great. The toilet ran, for one thing. Actually, it screamed. It sounded like someone was turning on the water full blast for a few seconds; that's what I thought it was at first, but it lasted all night, every couple minutes. I had no clothes to change into for Sunday, so I simply switched layers. Mike and I put the dresser back and then we headed to a nearby Denny's. I got an omelette this time. Then, once we'd eaten, we got on the road and started heading for home. Mike and I couldn't decide whether it would be more fun to tell our friends the horrible truth or to pretend that they'd missed having a wonderful time. We finally decided we'd gone through too much crap to not share it, and then we spent a long while trying to remember it all. (I also tried to work out what the heck I was going to write on my Buffett page, to excuse not being able to post an audio file for the first time in fourteen years.) Since it was Sunday morning we didn't bother avoiding Chicago and took I-94 right through it. I couldn't tell if the buildings looked familiar or not. Mike got a kick out of the fact I was swigging Dayquil the whole morning. Even though we were still far from home, it was funny how we felt a palpable sense of relief once we crossed over into Michigan.  Mike's wife was working again, but he'd made arrangements with his mom to babysit his kids. They weren't expected back till six, so that gave him a couple hours to crash once we finally made it to his house. I drove Patti back to our subdivision. I sped like a maniac, eager to get all this behind us. I think I got home at around four:thirty. I cleaned out the coolers, put all my junk away, powered up the computer to check my e-mail (and to find out what Buffett's encores had been last night, since Mike and Patti didn't know either), and then crashed on the couch. I did some work on my Detroit U2 bootleg, finishing the second disc. I also started encoding the MP3s so I could start uploading them soon. I discovered my SFG watch had shown up yesterday; it looked pretty sweet, and I'd have to add it to my Store page. I worked on the U2 MP3s all night and, before going to bed, start uploading them to Blood Red Sky. Monday, June 4 2001
The day was mild, but I was still so cold from Saturday that I wore a long-sleeve shirt. My upload was only halfway done, but I canceled it and vowed to finish tonight. I wanted to make sure everything went up properly. I made CD copies of the Detroit show, last night and tonight; I listened to my own and sent Phil's and Steve's off to them on the way to work. As announced, northbound Southfield Expressway was closed, so I was forced to find an alternate route. I'd discussed this with my brother a long time ago (Thanksgiving, in fact, when it had first been announced) and thus was finally able to try out his suggestion.I checked online to see if anyone might be selling bootlegs of the concert. I could lie and upload a concert excerpt to my website anyway, only pretending it was mine. It also dawned on me I could buy tickets for that Chicago show. Not only was it the last show of the tour but it was a Saturday, and I'd been to the venue before. It wasn't just a shed in a field like Alpine Valley, it was an actual permanent structure with running water and flushable toilets. I hated to admit, but the idea was extremely tempting. It would also mean I'd have a second chance at offering some Buffett audio from this tour. (But then again, my U2 "Zoo TV" concert at The New World had been one of the few times I'd gotten busted.) I sent an e-mail to Mike, asking him if I was a masochist. I also found out Mark from Blood Red Sky had already announced on his news page the 'half-concert' I'd uploaded. Reid and Jeremy didn't remember to ask about my concert till late in the day, and I regaled them with the full story. I continued the upload in the evening. And then started all over again, by uploading the Detroit MP3s to Zooropa overnight. Tuesday, June 5 2001
I'd assumed I'd be able to confirm the success of the upload when I got up, since chances are it would still be on-going. I hadn't considered though that the connection might breakdown. So now I found I could not log back in to confirm what I'd uploaded! I should be able to though -- it wasn't a case of too many users being logged on, since I'd been given a special password for uploads. It appeared that something was wrong with Zooropa and I simply could not connect with it.It was on this morning I killed off BeOS. I like this operating system but I hardly use it. It works better than Windows, it's a lot easier to use than Linux, but, like all upstarts to the Windows mantel, it lives or dies by its drivers. There are too many computer doodads I'm used to using which do not run under BeOS. And, frankly, I'd rather have the 1.5 GBs back. So I booted into Windows 98 (instead of Windows 2000) and used Partition Magic to format BeOS out of existence. Mike had not written back about whether I was stupid or not to be thinking of another Buffett road trip. I knew it might be swayed though by the promise of actual seats. Not that I thought of it, it should've been obvious to consult ticket brokers for the Alpine Valley show and not just settle for the Lawn tickets I'd gotten from Ticketmaster. I searched for seats now, for the September 15th show. I found some decent seats in row UU for $125 while another site had Lawn tickets for $125! While another site had front row seats for the astronomical sum of $1,350! I had to admit I was sorely tempted by those seats in UU. The site confirmed they had four consecutive seats in UU for $125 each, so it would be easy to nab two of them as soon as Mike wrote back. Reid had told me the error log was showing how one set of encoder boards was going to fail. San Diego had told him we could fix it by simply reconfiguring the boards. Reid asked me to do this before I left, and I am chagrined to say I was so involved in shopping for Buffett tickets I completely forgot to do that job. For a while I'd been considering getting rid of Windows 2000. I liked how it sped up my Internet downloads, but I did not like how I could not burn CDs or capture video or use my wireless webcam or my audio card -- or the fact that it might suddenly shutdown completely while I was online. I'd planned on doing this on a weekend, but for some reason I impulsively got started on it now when I got home. I reinstalled Windows 98, which overwrote the Windows 2000 boot menu and negated Windows 2000's existence. I recklessly only backed up a few folders, but nothing untoward happened anyway. Wednesday, June 6 2001
I reinstalled the ATI video card drivers, but they didn't seem to work that well. My desktop TV was screwed up. The 7.1 upgrade had worked fine in Windows 2000, but for some reason I could not get TV to show up under Windows 98. I also finally heard from Mike; he wrote in to say he could not make it to the September 15th Buffett show since that would be U of M football season, and that day happened to be their matchup with Western Michigan University. I hadn't thought of that. It was unfortunate, but I was still tempted to go and confident I could find somebody else to go with me. I wrote to Patti to see if she was interested. I also wrote to that guy from Rome GA with the recording of U2 in Lexington. I'd written him a while back, discussing a trade, and now that my Detroit CDs were done, I was ready to go ahead with it now.I still felt quite chilled and I even stopped to pick up another bottle of Dayquil on the way to work. I confessed about having forgotten to fault the encoder boards last night (the errors continued to show up), so we looked for an opening in the schedule when we might fault the boards during the day. I got an e-mail back from Patti, quickly. She said her travel group would be going to New York in September so she wouldn't be able to accompany me to Chicago. I also discovered Buffett had canceled the last show of the first leg of his tour, a few days away. I couldn't help wondering if it was canceled because he'd frozen his ass off at Alpine Valley. I faulted the encoder boards set before I left. I tried to meet up with my friends at Big Al's sports bar, following their golf game, so I could hand over a copy of the U2 show to Mike. At least he'd have some kind of concert recording from me. I was unsure when they'd show up, but I seemed to recall their leaving at around nine, so I needed to hurry. I got there at around eight:forty-five and even managed to score a nice movie star parking spot right by the front door. The place was packed and noisy (it's always noisy!) but I didn't see anyone I recognized. I couldn't believe I'd missed them again, since I'd tried to meet up with them a couple weeks ago. I worked on my ATI video drivers again when I got home. I wanted to get my TV working so I could watch U2's appearance from Boston as part of halftime for the NBA Playoffs. I downloaded different versions and patches and upgrades, trying to find the one that would really work with my All-in-Wonder card. At least I could get video, but every time I started the TV program I had to go through the Setup Wizard (choosing my cable type and my MPEG capture type). Which suggested that it still wasn't right. The start of U2's performance caught me by surprise. I raced up to my room to record them. I thought the direction blew too many opportunities by sticking to close-ups of Bono, but it was still great to get a taste of the Elevation tour again. It was almost just as exciting. Ahmad Rashad promised more from the Boston show later. I tried looking for it, but I think NBC ended up pimping us. Thursday, June 7 2001
A crew showed up this morning to chop down one of the big trees in our back yard. The tree was one of the original ones, in the woods behind us, but it was pretty much dead and quite hollow. A niche had formed in the base of its trunk, almost big enough to house a nice holy statue. Ironically, a seed must've blown in there since there was actually a small tree growing inside the hollow of the big one! One guy chopped the boughs off while other guys dragged the remains to a big chipper in the driveway. I sent off another two U2 CDs to Phil. He'd asked for three so now he had one extra. Dennis was in when I got in, so I was secretly pleased I'd gotten in early. He wanted to check on a few things before his Hawaii vacation would start next week. For some reason our error message continued, even though we'd reconfigured those boards. San Diego dialed into our system and we found out we were reading the error messages wrong and had swapped the wrong set. I sent Phil an e-mail about having sent his CDs, and he called me up right afterward. I swapped another set of boards before I left. I sent another e-mail about my Detroit CDs, this time to a guy named Freeman who had his own Detroit recording. We agreed to swap them. Friday, June 8 2001
The tree crew guys had also trimmed out ash tree out front. I guess they'd taken out some inner frustrations on it, since the poor tree was practically denuded in the daylight. It had no branches until the very top; it almost reminded me of a palm tree. I checked out a U2 fan site which offers SHN files. These are files made with lossless compression from WAV files, so CDRs made from them should sound exactly like the originals. The site offered a full U2 bootleg and, even better, download speeds were remarkably fast, so I was able to download 2 CDs' worth of material, uncompress them, and burn them to disc all before I left for work. I even had time to buy another bottle of Dayquil. Remarkably, we were still getting the error message; so now San Diego thought one of our boards had indeed gone bad. They promised to send a new one out. I saw grumblings on the U2 listserv that the band's management had tried to shaft the fans by handpicking attractive people from the General Admission line and putting them in the Heart so they'd show up on camera for the NBA telecast from Boston. This was shameful if true, but what struck me more was how pointless that action had been, since the people who showed up the most on-camera were the people behind the stage not in front of it. It was too bad so many people felt hurt and betrayed over a thing which ultimately turned out to be so unnecessary.I finally got around to deleting some of the folders on my old Windows 2000 drive. I hadn't realized I'd installed my Norton programs there, so when I deleted them I screwed up the DOS shortcuts when I boot up. (I'd kept my Windows 2000 drive as FAT32, so nothing on it had been exclusive to it.) I'd need to reinstall my Utilites and AntiVirus, but I put that off till tomorrow. Instead, I watched my NetFlix rental of Ben-Hur. Saturday, June 9 2001
My Dell had a lot of trouble booting up since Norton AntiVirus was gone. So I reinstalled it as soon as I finally got into Windows 98. I also recreated my Windows swap file partition; now that my Windows 2000 partition was gone, I could move my swap file partition from the end of the disk to closer to the front.I'd be going to a graduation party tomorrow, so, just in case my nephews and nieces were there, I made copies of my U2 Detroit show to hand out. I wanted to give one to nephew Joe, since he'd almost gone to the show, so I felt obligated to give them to my other nephew and nieces. I ran out of CD labels and covers so I went out to Office Depot around dinner time. Unfortunately, all they had were high gloss ones. I also picked up a KFC meal. In the evening, my Aunt Mary and Uncle John came over. My Aunt commented how she still emjoys listening to The Mission CD I'd made for her, so I made her a copy of my Loreena McKennitt compilation. I fixed the DHTML menu on my Buffett pages; I'd discovered by accident that the menu was too big to be displayed on screens smaller than 800x600, so I resized its font to make the menu smaller. Sunday, June 10 2001
I'd held off buying any of the Buffett tickets since there was an on-going auction at eBay for even better tickets. A guy was selling two consecutive seats in row Y. I wouldn't be able to activley participate because of the graduation party, so I put in a proxy bid for $300 and hoped for the best. The party was for a cousin's stepdaughter; it was nice since it was fairly close by, and it was also a chance to see my dad's side of the family. The day started out quite nice but right after the party started a huge black cloud creeped overhead and dumped a heavy rain on us. My brothers showed up but not their kids, so I did not hand out the four Palace shows I'd brought. It was a pretty big shindig and nicely catered. Right after the party my parents and on when to my brother Mark's house in Northville, for my niece Heather's birthday party. We had pizza and I got to see my niece Cathy's boyfriend for the first time.When I got home I found out I'd won the Buffett tickets. Not only did I have another chance to see Buffett this tour, but we'd have real seats and a much better view. I wrote to Phil and asked him if he might want to go. Monday, June 11 2001
I woke myself up at five with a fit of coughing. I couldn't get back to sleep so I stayed up and finished the Ben-Hur disc. I managed to catch some more sleep between seven and nine:thirty. We got that replacement board, at work, which I swapped after programming was done. Phil wrote back, saying he had a fishing tourney that weekend. I also discovered that some guy from Maryland was auctioning off my Toronto recording.Tuesday, June 12 2001
I discovered there was an article about Bruce Campbell in the Free Press, talking about the release of his new book. I'd heard about it a while ago, so was pleased to hear it was now available. I checked out Bruce Campbell's own web site and discovered to my shock that he would actually be in town for a book signing. Not only that, the store was the Borders just up the street from where I work. Not only that, I slowly realized the date was actually for last Saturday. So I'd missed it. The stupid Free Press had waited till after this personal appearance to plug the book. Brilliant.When I got home I found my Buffett tickets had already shown up! Plus I got that alternate recording ot the U2 Palace show. (It didn't sound as good as mine, I thought.) Wedsnesday, June 13 2001
I guess I was still hung up on Bruce Campbell. I ordered The Evil Dead 2 special edition DVD (since it had a featurette my laserdisc didn't). I came close to ordering his book from Borders, but I hated to get a plain unadorned copy when Borders could've provided me with an autographed one. I checked eBay just to see if I could find any kind of autographed copy. Even better, a West Coast store called Metro Entertainment was hosting a Bruce Campbell book signing and had a Dutch auction to get one of eight books not only signed but personalized. This was perfect so I put in my bid. I finally successfully met up with my buddies at Big Al's after work. I gave Mike his copy of the Palace show and since everyone took an interest in it -- impressed that U2 not only did not frown on taping but had encouraged people to bring in cameras too -- I handed out my remaining four copies out in the parking lot as we left.Thursday, June 14 2001
I'd dropped out of the running for one of the eight Bruce Campbell books, so I quickly upped my bid. Luckily I did this as soon as I got online since my cable modem started misbehaving a short while later. I restarted my computer several times but could not coerce my modem into working again. Jeremy was alone when I got in. He said Reid had been complaining of a bad stomach ache and had finally gone back home. Tonight was my nephew Joe's graduation but I got home too late to attend.Friday, June 15 2001
I got my haircut in the morning. After work I also stopped at the nearby Best Buy to finally get some matte-finish CD labels and inserts. I came close to buying the new CE3K DVD but talked myself out of it. I already had the same package on laserdisc and although I love the movie I'd simply seen it way too many times to be exciting by another release of it. I got Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window instead.Saturday, June 16 2001
I'd exceeded my bandwidth by uploading a concert to my other domain, but I cleared out enough room at SFG so I could upload my entire Palace show. I finished the transfer this morning. At the same time I worked on creating MP3s of my Barenaked Ladies recording. I hoped to offer them to the webmaster at Holylands so I could in turn get the FTP password to download his Radio Margaritavile recording of the Alpine Valley show. I'd rather get RealAudio of that show free than have to pay for it on eBay. I worked on a web page for my Palace show and then, before dinner, went out and got a Father's Day card. My brother Rick's brother-in-law Jack was hosting dinner tomorrow (I guess he felt obligated since his sister Debby usually does the hosting); my brother Mark couldn't make it, so he would be visiting my dad tonight. So I had the opportunity to join in on two Father's Day dinners.Sunday, June 17 2001
It was a hot and sunny day. I was hoping Jack would have a big air conditioned house, but in fact we spent the afternoon in his small backyard. I stayed in the shade, at the mouth of his garage. I handed out my Palace CDs to Joe, who'd complained my brother had taken every possible side street to come here, rather than go through the construction on Telegraph. I hate to admit it, but I almost would've preferred to spend the day in the yard next door, where they had an above-ground pool, a charcoal grill, and at least one blonde in a bikini. Jack had prepared pork chops, both plain and barbecued, in different roasting pans. It was tasty, although it seemed to a unexpected meal to be eating outside.Monday, June 18 2001
I stopped at the post office again before work. I sent Phil some more CDs, but these were U2 shows I'd downloaded from different sites (the 5/15 Chicago show and Minneapolis, to be specific). As I got on the expressway I started worrying that I'd forgotten my ID card. I became so obsessed I finally pulled over to the shoulder. It turned out I'd been sitting on it, so there was no need to head back home. Once at work, I found out we had some big problems. We were unable to log into the GUI which contols our main computer. Reid was already on the phone with San Diego. They had dialed into our system and were looking around. Eventually they discovered our system was being hung up by nothing more than the back-up tape in our 8mm tape drive. All I needed to do was eject it and put it a different one.I got a bunch of calls about a late afternoon show. It didn't appear to be anything out of the ordinary, but it was surprisingly popular. The folks at the help desk were reporting calls were coming in saying there were audio and video problems, but the transmission looked perfectly fine here. In the evening, on a whim, I looked up some stuff on minidiscs. I was still obsessed with my failures at Alpine Valley. My DAT recorder might've been too big for close inspection, but a minidisc recorder would be smaller, right? And they had a higher profile and were therefore presumably getting cheaper, right? I looked up some models on eBay, just to see which ones were popular or better. Tuesday, June 19 2001
I continued investigating minidiscs, both on eBay and through Google. It appeared the best model to get was the Sony MZ-R900 (since I like Sony). I found a site called Warehouse123.com which sold the "Premium" edition for $299. Once I discovered how close I was to buying one, it was inevitable I'd break down and go ahead with the order. The Warehouse123 site looked professional enough but, oddly, I had to pay them through Paypal instead of their having a merchant account for credit cards. And then they did not send me an e-mail to confirm my order. I hadn't bothered to save my order page or print it out, since I'd been expecting an e-mail. I soon began to realize what an uncomfortable position I was in. I would be unable to write them about my order since I could not refer to an order number; and they could simply claim not to have received my order. Maybe I'd just been scammed. After all the online orders I'd made, maybe I'd gotten careless enough to get stung.I had big plans for the night but had barely had time to update my homepage when the power went out again. Con Edison said it would not be restored for five hours. Thank God for AA batteries, since I was able to spend the evening listening to some of my CDRs (Army of Darkness for instance). I also got to watch some of my Rear Window DVD, before my portable player's battery ran out after an hour. The worst part though was trying to sleep through the night. I had to keep my windows open, but loud dogs and cars and birds kept me awake. Wednesday, June 20 2001
I was thoroughly disgusted to discover our power was still out when I got up. I set a flashlight on my vanity while I showered. I left early, since there was nothing to do. I had to close the garage door manually, which did not seem all that secure. I went to Borders, by work, to kill some time, picking up the latest Official X-Files Magazine. Late in the day I called the house to see if we had electricity to power the answering machine. I think power had come back on about an hour after I'd left. I got an e-mail alerting me that two of my Palace files were incomplete. I checked this out at night, finding out in fact that three were incomplete. I also discovered, to my alarm, that someone had posted a complaint on the Minidisc Discussion Board. "If you don't want your money to go down the drain," the person wrote, "then DON'T BUY FROM WAREHOUSE123.COM. They don't even have a phone number to call so it's very hard to track them down. I've been researching this company, they're not listed in any business directory nor in the Lawrence, Kansas Chamber of Commerce. All you get is a Chinese name to whom you address your check and a post office box address." I immediately sent Warehouse123 an e-mail demanded confirmation of my order.Thursday, June 21 2001
I checked my credit card company's page, looking into canceling my minidisc order if possible. We'd fixed the problem with our 8mm tape drive, at work, but still needed to get the DLT drive repaired. It had burned out during our last power outage. We'd worked out with San Diego who covered it, so we got our on-site repairman to finally come in and repair it.Friday, June 22 2001
The morning had been busy, I heard, due to an unexpected special broadcast. But things had settled down by the time I got in. I did some more investigating on Warehouse123 -- who had yet to respond to my e-mail -- using the Deja News site. Others were nervous about the Message Board post, while others were saying that we should take Warehouse123's one-week shipping promise and multiply by four. This sounded somewhat reassuring; at least it seemed some orders were completed.Jeremy got a phone call which he had trouble understanding and which he assumed was a wrong number. I got the phone when it rang right after, and found it was a call from Mexico! They needed help installing a new receiver. Later in the day I started hearing a strange beep. I couldn't pinpoint it -- what with all the different computers in our room -- but I discovered the on-screen Program Guide had gone bad. I restarted the computer and the program, but the beeping continued. I eventually found out one of our programs was reporting an error on our DLT drive. We'd just had the power supply replaced yesterday, but somehow the DLT drive was already dead again! Frustratingly, there was no way to shut the error screen off. It adamantly wanted to get its point across. I finally was forced to restart the console session. I wouldn't've expected this to be all that big a deal, but as the new console session started it knocked out four of our channels! I had to pull their encoder boards out and reconfigure them to get video back. I still could not get the on-screen Program Guide back on though, so I left a note for Jeremy to try restarting the program tomorrow when he came in. I found my autographed Bruce Campbell book when I got home. "Hey Mickey," he wrote. "SHOP SMART!" I loved it! Or, at the risk of being clichéd: "Groovy!" Saturday, June 23 2001
Today was my nephew Joe's graduation party, so I spent pretty much all day at my brother Rick's.  By the side door was a kiddie pool of pop and water and a kiddie pool of beer. There were bowls of chips as well as bowls of a mixture of peanuts and M&Ms. The dinner was pita sandwiches and a platter of chicken wings, plus a variety of potato, taco, and GreeK salads. Rick also grilled hot dogs for the kids, but these were even more popular with the adults. I stayed quite late and, as seems to the norm for me, ended up being the last guest to leave. I think I got home around two. Sunday, June 24 2001
I got up around ten. I finally got around to writing Marty at the Holylands FTP site, requesting the password and offering my Barenaked Ladies concert. I also finally got a response from Warehouse123.com. No surprise, they requested my order number. It was as if they'd called my bluff, since by own fault I could not provide it to them. Although it was nice outside, I stayed indoors and finished my rental of Best in Show as well as the documentary on the Rear Window disc. Around four in the afternoon I started feeling queasy. I walked down to the bathroom, feeling the strong and undeniable desire to vomit.What was worse, my Aunt Mary and Uncle John came over to have some of the leftover hot dogs. I was a horrid host, since after one bite I had to walk off back to the bathroom to throw up again. It was easy to think I was simply hungover, but I couldn't get past the fact I'd woken up feeling fairly fine. I hadn't started feeling ill till late in the day. And, of course, simply, this did not feel like being hungover. I did not have a headache or neck ache; I just had nausea. I was forced to abandon the guests so I could flop onto my bed and nap. I woke up later in the evening feeling better, and I thought I might've outlasted my tummy ache...until a few minutes later when I had to visit my bathroom again. And then, a couple hours later I started feeling fine. Monday, June 25 2001
I mean no offense regarding my brother's hospitality, but I couldn't help wondering if I'd gone through a bout of food poisoning yesterday. I didn't hear of anyone else suffering, so maybe it wasn't a case of the potato salad mayonnaise going bad. Maybe I'd had too many peanuts with my M&Ms. Or maybe I couldn't handle all that mayonnaise in the different salads.I still did not feel all that great this morning. I no longer puked, but I still felt rather unsteady and a little queasy. I got a response from Marty at Holylands, so I was able to log in and download the Alpine Valley show. I could finally hear the second half of it. I had to stop at the post office again before work. I'd gotten a slip of paper saying a package could not be delivered on Saturday, so I had to go to the Trenton post office to pick it up. When I got back to the car I was overcome with queasiness again, as if standing in line had been too much for me. I blasted the air conditioner and lolled against my headrest. I was sorely tempted to take a detour, to head right back home instead of heading to the expressway. I kept following my commute though. I was glad I worked in an office with its own air conditioning units, since I was looking forward to staying cool. It might be the only thing keeping me well. So of course, something had to happen to the air conditioning. The room was uncomfortably stuffy and warm when I got in. Reid and Jeremy told me we'd taken another power hit yesterday. The team in charge of the building had ignored us, figuring since we're on their UPS grid our equipment would recover. They seemed to have forgotten that because of a decision by the fire marshall our air conditioners had been rewired to not automatically come back on. So our room and all the equipment in it had baked all day and all night! After hearing it, I was amazed we were able to transmit any video at all. But Reid had been able to get all the channels back up. The on-screen Guide was still not working and the DLT tape drive was still down, but for the most part we were operational. But, later in the day, we started seeing glitching on our first channel. The production department called us up about it too. We tried configuring the boards but the glitching continued. We even pulled the boards out from an unused channel and tried those. The glitching continued. We made the mistake of telling the production department we'd used another channel's boards and they grew worried this would endanger a show tomorrow on that channel. We even started getting e-mails from their and our bosses about this situation. So I spent much of the rest of the day explaining how this had been a temporary fix and we would've put the boards back after that first channel's show was done. We had no spare boards however, unfortunately. Some of the boards had not worked this morning, so Reid had had to cobble sets togerher that would work. And we could not get new boards from San Diego till tomorrow at the earliest. So it was agreed to cancel the first channel's show. I felt bad that our equipment had caused this, but by the same token it was not our fault. It was the fault of the nimrods who'd completely ignored the high heat warnings in our room and had let all our equipment bake for twenty-four hours. (It was also not lost on us how this calamity had coincided with Dennis's departure for Hawaii.) Late in the day, San Diego suggested I fault the multiplex set of boards. I did so, and immediately the glitching on the first channel went away. They still needed to send us some spare boards though, which they promised were on the way. Tuesday, June 26 2001
Our spare boards did not show up.It was still pretty warm in the room. We just assumed the air conditioners were still trying to catch up, but when the big boss dropped by he told us to give building services a call. The on-site air conditioning guy showed up in the afternoon. Both units were working, but evidently the Freon had become disconnected in one of them. It started feelng a little cooler right afterward. It started feeling normal by the end of the day. That special show we'd been warned about turned into a real pain in the sphincter. For one thing, unbeknownst to us it was scheduled to be repeated. For another thing, some important sites were not receiving it -- and I could not understand why. The software settings were correct, but for some reason certain scenes were unable to tune in. They either got a screen saying they needed to be "subscribed" or they just got a black screen. That black screen part seemed suspiciously like a side effect of another department's data transfers, and although people were calling us up to fix it there was little we could do. Our channel for Mexico went out several times during the day. We could get it back on by faulting the boards, but we could not get audio. This became more important as the late-night Mexico show approached. We had a few boards lying about which had not worked for Reid yesterday, so I started pairing boards together, experimenting, trying to get Mexico operational by seven PM. I didn't succeed until seven:thirty, but at least they had video and audio, and the signal was stable enough to last through the show. Shortly before it was time to leave, the video went out on a bunch of channels. However, this was the fault of the production department, where the video originates. It was rather nice to not be at fault, but at the same time I was concerned how the absence of video would affect our already wounded encoder boards. So we tried to quickly get a freeze frame logo up on all channels. Wednesday, June 27 2001
I got a long-awaited letter from my pen pal today. She had been planning on passing by on the way to laser eye surgery in Canada. It turned out this had been for naught. She'd come up only to find the company had gone out of business. She'd still stayed in Michigan for a week before returning to Illinois, and I was somewhat hurt that she hadn't found time for me and I was hearing this now that she'd gone back home. I also noticed that the Warehouse123.com site had been updated. The price of a Sony minidisc premium package was $309. I assumed this would not concern me since I'd already put my order in; and I was slightly relieved there'd been an update at all, as if this showed the site wasn't quite the anonymous scam I feared it might be.Reid was alone when I got in. This was not a surprise for me, since Jeremy had hinted he would not be coming in today. Things had gotten worse with our on-screen Program Guide computer; the program had frozen again but when Reid tried to restart the computer he found he couldn't even boot into NT! Plus, we were getting the run-around regarding our DLT drive, despite the fact he'd gone through this whole thing already last week. We simply needed that replacement power supply replaced, but they were having him try other solutions as well as debating who covered repair costs. Reid and I tried reinstalling NT on the on-screen Guide's computer. I finished the job after Reid left. I'd hoped a reinstall would not affect the Guide's software, but evidently it did since I could not get the program to start. I contacted the group in San Diego and confirmed I would need to reinstall the Guide's software too, to restore its needed Registry settings. I at least got a PO number from them for getting our DLT drive repaired. And I pointedly mentioned how we were still waiting for our spare boards. I worked on the computer when I got home, using my desktop to watch local coverage of the Detroit/Windsor fireworks over the Detroit River.  My little nephew Jake got me a snail for my fish. (I believe my snails had been killed when I'd last changed the fish's water.) He'd gotten replacement snails himself from a pet store, for his own fish, and hed thoughtfully gotten one for me too. This new snail was much bigger than the original two; in fact he was ridiculously big for such a small cube.  Thursday, June 28 2001
Things were settling down, but nothing actually got fixed. On a whim, I went to my old friend John Mabry's site, Apocryphile.net. I found out his interest in music had led him to joining a prog rock band, Metaphor, and they'd released a CD. I went ahead and ordered a copy. We got a couple visitors, inspecting our air conditioners and the manual start button which had been installed by order of the fire marshall. It seemed to me we could avoid any more overheating problems by adding a timer to the air conditioners. If the whole purpose for having them not come on was because of the CO2 fire extinguishing system, why not put a fifteen or thirty minute timer on them. If the power went out again, then our air conditioners would pop back on in a short while, instead of staying off all day. What concerned me more, though, was the fact I'd accidentally left the AOL Welcome screen prominently displayed on my laptop. In the evening I caught up on some old tapes. I was particularly taken with one of the Whose Line episodes from Monday. Sitting on the right (our left) of Clive Anderson was a particularly pretty girl I took a liking to.I discovered a package waiting for me, too. It was my Sony MZ-R900 minidisc player from Warehouse123.com! It was not the premium package, I saw (so they'd cheated me on that), but I was thrilled to get the recorder at all. I instantly opened up the package and began reading the owner's manual before mucking about with it. Friday, June 29 2001
I stopped by Best Buy before work, to buy some blank minidiscs. I thought they sold pre-recorded discs too, but evidently they do not. I'd brought my recorder with me, but I wouldn't be able to do anything with it till I got home. I don't know if Dennis was officially back or not, but he dropped by during the afternoon. The day was pretty quiet. I continued skimming through the minidisc Owner's Manual in the late afternoon. I got restless and after finding a pair of headphones I used them as microphones just to try and record something on one of my blank discs. When I got home I decided my first minidisc recording would be a dupe of my friend John Mabry's cassette Aleythia. I duped it to minidisc so I could eventually dupe it to my hard drive. I could clean it up and then make a CD of it. At the end of the night, I watched an hour of my NetFlix rental Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.Saturday, June 30 2001
Jeremy couldn't work the weekend, so I took the shift. It was short and uneventful. Once I got home I continued work on John Mabry's Aleythia. I could remember talking to him about how cool it would be if he could release a CD of his songs, and we'd imagined how cool it would if CDs were recordable like cassettes. I was tempted to go see A.I. tonight. A Spielberg movie or Lord of the Rings seemed about the only thing to drag me into a movie theater. But, tonight, that didn't even work either. I stayed home all night, and instead thought about going to see a late showing next week after work.Back to Trouble Loner homepage To Bitter Old Man site To SFG World |
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