I was talking with drummer John last night.  Actually, we were very nearly arguing about equipment for Collision, as I was trying to explain to him that if I could not find an eight inch four ohm fifty watt speaker to replace the one that burned out in the nice compact PA columns I wanted to use, this did not mean that I had to replace the entire sound system.  John is a drummer, and although Animal does not capture his personality, he is mildly technophobic and quite justly uninformed about amplifiers.  However, it proved to be a rather productive argu–er, discussion–as in making my point I was reminded that maybe a year ago my sound wizard Grey Vanaman of Audio-clear dropped off a pair of tall columns he had ripped out of a church where he was doing an install.  They had these weird mounting brackets on them and were painted white, and although I checked them briefly at the time to see if they worked I stuffed them in the attic pretty quickly.  But I figured with the compact boxes I really wanted to use out of commission, these four foot narrow columns would have to do.  Turns out they’re pretty decent speakers–Electrovoice Radiators–and so my PA system is now up and running.

I’ve also been loaned a solder iron, so assuming I also can find some solder I hope to repair the Hartke speaker tomorrow and get my instrument amplifier up and running.  Maybe if things go well I’ll put together the effects boxes I’ve intended to construct.

Today things did not go so well.  Fortunately, last week I made a decision to put an end to my participation in the Lutheran forum.  I kept inviting Lutheran friends of mine to participate there, and they never do; and some of the new members of that board weren’t really keen on having input from some weird multi-denominational Baptist when they were really hoping to have their own opinions confirmed by others who shared them.  More to the point, I needed to free up some time, and even though I was visiting them only once a week, it was tending to be a long visit that needed shortening.  I’ve now cleared some time on Tuesdays for other projects.

Today, though, did not go particularly well.  Most of the problems lay in the personal problems areas, and outside the purview of this blog; however, one thing that was a bit vexing is that I attempted to e-mail eight files (attached to separate letters) to the radio station to be four episodes of the Quick Word radio show on Faith and Gaming.  Since I still can’t convert to mp3, these are rather large files, and it seems that once seven were moving I was unable to connect to anything else on the Internet for several hours.  This definitely put me behind schedule, and I really ought in future to send fewer at a time and make sure to do so when I go to bed.

It’s getting late, but I’m not tired, so I’m going to attempt to get through a few forum posts at least.

–M. J. Young

As I was headed for the last leg before bed last night, around two in the morning, the phone rang.  It was our drummer John, wanting an update.  I am not complaining about the lateness of the call, as I did tell him that between midnight and three in the morning was the most reliable time to reach me, and he does work until eleven when he’s working, so it makes sense for him to call me then.  However, just because that’s the best time to get me doesn’t mean it’s a good time.  He always says, “I caught you at a bad time.”  I always answer, There are no good times.  I try to pressure people into using e-mail to contact me.  I can get to it when I actually have time, and can interrupt my response sometimes for hours at a stretch while I put everything else in place.  He’s older than I, and was technophobic before that was a word, so he likes talking to someone as close to in person as he can get–which for us is the telephone most of the time.

In any case, when I cut the call short at forty minutes (I believe two and a half hours is closer to his typical conversation, and on one of the first calls we went nearly twice that) I promised that I would somehow let him know the outcome of today’s tech work.  Gray Vanaman of Audio-clear, to whom we already owe so much, took a couple hours out of his afternoon to help me fix a few problems.  I was right about the problem with the P.A.:  it was something simple and stupid that I just did not know about the mixer, which was that all channels have to be assigned to a secondary or they don’t get to the mains.  In other words, we have a functional P.A. now.  Since that took him all of five minutes and he was there anyway, he also tackled the problem with the Ampeg V4s–beautiful classic bass guitar speaker cabinets, four twelve-inch woofers in each, but they have the old four-pin amphenols Ampeg used on all its speakers back in the day.  He replaced these with these newfangled connectors–NL4s, I think he calls them–and made me a pair of patch cords that will connect from the standard phone outputs of my amplifiers to the NL4 inputs.

Already several people have been impressed by Adam’s bass guitar set-up, as he has the classic Ampeg B-15, one of the best portable bass amps ever made, fifteen inch woofer in the cabinet, paired with the external Ampeg V4 bass speaker column, and it sounds wonderful.  I’ll be using the other V4 with my amp; I’ve a few things to set up to get that working, but it should be good to go maybe even by tomorrow evening.  I expect to have more trouble fixing the vacuum cleaner than I will setting up my equipment, although I’ve lost a needed switchbox and am going to have to buy the components to build another (something of my own invention that no one else has).  But I can work without it for the moment.  I’m just hoping I have enough patch cords to connect everything.

Rehearsal tomorrow; hopefully it will go well.

–M. J. Young

As mentioned, I picked up a very nice rather powerful power amp yesterday from Grey Vanaman of Audio-Clear.  It is now on the floor in my living room with some of my other equipment, somewhat surreptitious for its small size.  Between now and Thursday night I will need to add to it a rather large mixing board, a pair of mikes with stands, two compact but noticeable speaker columns, and a pair of self-powered monitors, all of which will be considerably less surreptitious.  I worry a bit, because that is nothing compared to the planned addition of another mixer with built-in amp and the two large cabinets, one with four tens and the other with four twelves, each large enough that I anticipate using them as tables for the two mixers, which will be added to power my instruments.  My basement might have been large enough at one time to host a band, but it has been sectioned in various ways which make that impossible unless I oust someone from a bedroom.  On the other hand, we will never fit all of this plus two drummers (or likely even one drummer) in the living room, so I probably ought to be more concerned with how I am going to get all of this plus my son’s equipment and my son into the back of a compact car.  I’m good, but given that he will be using a good sized amp (my old Ampeg B-15) plus another column which matches the one with the four twelves, I think neither a Neon nor a Saturn will do.  I will probably wind up moving gear in the pickup truck, which means dealing with weather by means of a tarp, a handful of come-alongs, and a box of bungies.  Rain will not be my friend.

It is ironic that I have had vans for many years, but none of them when I also had a band.  I always wanted a van particularly so that I could transport equipment for the band, but the two have never managed to fall together.  Ah, well–better to haul equipment in a pickup than to haul trash in a van, I suppose.

–M. J. Young

Yesterday I mentioned having made a few minor changes to the Temporal Anomalies section of M. J. Young Net.  I did not mention, because I forgot completely until I was answering an e-mail today, that I also updated the Other Films page, where I list movies I have not yet analyzed, and give some idea of whether I am going to and what I think in brief.  It came to me because there was an e-mail awaiting me today asking if I planned to analyze a movie I just added to that page, Premonition, which is sitting on my television awaiting my attention.

I also dropped a note to Grey Vanaman of Audio-Clear, the man and the company who have (has?) helped Collision, and before that 7dB, so much with equipment, about getting an amp for our P.A.  I got his response today, and he’s got just the ticket, so I’ll probably try to pick it up when I go out a bit later.  This will make everyone happy, but particularly our distant drummer John, who has been told repeatedly that I can’t really bring the drums to rehearsal until I can hear the vocals over them.  We just moved a lot closer.

I’ve much to do, so I’d better turn my attention toward doing some of it.

–M. J. Young

I have continued to fight my way through the analysis of Primer, writing as I reason, and challenging my understanding of the film with each step. I need to view it again before I can finish it, because there is an extended segment about a guy with a shotgun at a party that I’ve not quite fit into the story yet.

I have also started on Lake House. It seems that on Friday night, my college son and his girlfriend decided they wanted to watch it, so I opened it and set it up. Then her phone rang, and he decided to get something else done while she was on the phone, and I decided to get something else done while awaiting them, and in the end she fell asleep on the couch and he decided not to watch it. I watched more than half an hour of it, but had to run a scheduled errand and never got back to it. However, it is already interesting, even if part of my interest stems from the fact that I was told something about it in advance which informs my understanding of one of the earliest scenes in the film. I’m already labeling it “Frequency by mail”, because it has that aspect of sending information through time.

Meanwhile, our intended Collision rehearsal collapsed, because the brakes on the new car quit, apparently blowing a major leak in the line to the rear brakes. My houseguests have concluded that this is not something they can fix here without a lift, so we are temporarily without a vehicle. On the other hand, they don’t think it will take long for a mechanic to fix it tomorrow, so that’s the plan.

In the midst of this, our washing machine decided to start spewing water onto the floor. This created a serious complication, as my wife has to have clean uniforms for work every day, and that includes doing laundry before tomorrow afternoon–not to mention that everyone else in the house needs clothes as well. Fortunately, our houseguests were able to find and repair that problem, so this is up and running. I must also extend my thanks to Grey Vanaman of Audio-clear, who has extended to us the use of one of his equipment transport vans to handle our necessary transportation.

I need to get a few things done before I lose the light, and figure out what I’m making for dinner, but hopefully I should be back to the forums before long.

–M. J. Young