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

I’m sure I’ve done a number of things since I last posted; I’ve not posted primarily because none of them really are completions, just landmarks along the way.

I’ve written, recorded, and sent a number of episodes in the Quick Word radio show’s Faith and Gaming series.  I still have not found a way to convert them to mp3 format, but I’ll manage.

I’ve made some progress on the equipment for Collision.  I’ve got two obstacles at the moment, one easily remedied and the other not so.  The easy one is that my solder iron seems to have wandered off–as my tools often do.  I will pick up another at my first opportunity.  I need it for a number of projects, but most specifically because a couple wires are loose on one of the speakers I’ll be using for my instruments amplifier, and I need to reconnect these.

The more difficult and frustrating problem is that I’ve burned out a speaker and need to replace it.  This is difficult and frustrating because I can’t find anyone who sells a speaker that will do the job. It must be 8 inches in diameter, and round, and it must be 4 ohms, and it must be rated at at least 50 watts.  I’ve found a few speakers promoted as being able to handle more power than that, but they’re generally rated 15 to 25 watts and then stated to handle more in peak power.  My best hope at the moment is to find something designed for car stereo use–not ideal, but seriously it’s gotten impossible to find anything in the nature of an electronics hobbyist’s store.  I will probably hit Best Buy sometime for that.

I’m sure there’s more, but that’s all that comes to mind.

–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

I did not really take today off.  Despite it being Independence Day I had no barbecue, no fireworks, no celebration.  I just never really got started.  I poked at one thing or another, thinking that after I did this, or that, or whatever, I would turn to today’s work.

That is now technically yesterday’s work, and I have to be up in a few hours to start today.  I am thinking that I will tackle today’s work, or yesterday’s, or whatever it is, tomorrow, or tonight, or whenever it will be.

However, my poking and prodding was not unproductive.  I finished at least six scripts and started a seventh for the Quick Word radio show, and got two of them recorded–that is, two weeks worth of programs, four shows.  The ones I recorded I did last night; the other five were done in bits and pieces today.  I haven’t sent them yet (I want to give the snail mail message that the program is being continued time to reach the right department before I start transfering audio files to them), but progress is progress.

I could offer the excuse that I am a bit sore today.  It comes from climbing around in the attic hauling down heavy and bulky audio equipment through a ceiling door down a stepladder.  I did not get it working, but I know the first few diagnostic steps I need to make, and I should find time to make them eventually.

–M. J. Young

I made a decision this week concerning the Quick Word radio show I broadcast every week.  It has been in reruns for several months, and I have been undecided what to do with it as it has not had the level of response for which I had hoped.  However, as of last night I have determined to keep the show going.  I will be starting a new subject next weekend (it is too late to have it on this week) based on the Faith and Gaming book, which I will have to start recording.

For those who do not know, A Quick Word comes on in two segments of one hundred fifty seconds each, on Sunday afternoon between five thirty and six o’clock on Lift FM, which you can hear locally in Bridgeton and Hopewell at 98.5 FM, and on a different frequency I do not remember out at the New Jersey shore southern regions such as Cape May and Wildwood, and over the Internet from their web site at www.LiftFM.com.  It is in a half hour block of music by local artists sandwiched between two local preachers.  I strongly suspect that my dearth of response is because I am in that broadcasting ghetto–I know others who advertise on the station who have gotten good response, but their ads fall during the week when it’s almost all music.

That means I have to write and record a few scripts based on the first chapters of that book, but at least I have an outline of what I plan to do for most of the next year.

I have just sat down with dinner after frantically racing about attempting to set up equipment for a Collision rehearsal which is not going to happen.  It seems that Brittany pinched a nerve trying to lift something and can’t stand, and Baxter couldn’t call me because he is out of minutes on his cell phone but managed to let Brittany know that he was sick.  Adam is, I believe, here, but exhausted.  His girlfriend had minor surgury yesterday, and he spent the night at her grandparents’ house caring for her, came home to shower and change and asked if he could go back, then fell asleep.  I will probably wake him in a bit, insist that he eat some dinner, go over a part or two with him that I think are important, and then let him go back to caring for his girlfriend.  She is important to him, and that makes her important to us, too.

Of course, I have more equipment in the living room than I’ve had yet, and the fact that we did not wind up rehearsing makes it less justifiable–but I will finish setting up what I have, and make certain it is all functional, and that will be good for something.  I am distressed that I cannot find the nice pair of self-powered monitors which I have long known were probably the one solid piece of the sound system on which I could depend.  I have searched the attic (where I put some things) and the basement (where the people who helped my wife clean her kitchen and living room put more things) and am rather concerned that I don’t know where they went.  I might have to give Tyler a shout, to see whether I left them at his place at some point, but I’m pretty certain I didn’t.

Anyway, it gives me more time to work on stuff here, so I’d better use it wisely.

–M. J. Young

When I arrived earlier, I hesitated and then skipped the blog and went directly to the forum.  I had this feeling that I had done something, but did not know what it was.

What it was was I went to the Collision MySpace and did a bit of site editing.  In particular, I added a “story behind the song” blog entry, and rearranged a few new friends.

I am thinking that it also ought to have some background stuff about the band–like, why the name–and bios of the members; but I don’t want mine to be the first bio, so I’m going to have to chat with everyone tomorrow at practice.

Which reminds me, I have to get that equipment down from the attic.

–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 fixed a few things since Friday, mostly yesterday evening.

The big one is probably the Collision MySpace.  After a fair amount of hair-pulling, I managed to pull the black background out from behind the black print, so the site can now be read.  I also sent some friend invitations (to people who already know the band, so that means locals), added a brief history (which needs some editing), and uploaded the lyrics of our first song to the blog (since I didn’t see a place for lyrics).  I sent Baxter and Brittany notes alerting them to this.  I also took note that our MySpace site name is CollisionAtHopewell.  Checking in briefly now, I note that we’ve had positive answers to two of our invites.  If I tell you that they are from my son and Baxter’s sister, I hope that doesn’t make you think less of us.

The second repair job, which I actually did before that, was on the Temporal Anomalies site.  I proofread my response to Vazor’s blog, made a few minor corrections, and then redid a piece of the directory structure for the site, changing the section name that was “Correspondence” to “Conversation“, adding to the subindex of that section the new page plus the four pages which were responses to questions on another site years ago, and redoing the links on all the pages in that site to include those five along with the two dozen letters.  Hopefully it will make site navigation a bit easier.  Meanwhile, I note that Vazor has thanked me for my response, on his blog, and promised a followup post; I will have to keep alf an eye there, although I have asked that he notify me when he posts it.

The third thing that got repaired is really the first.  I started once more reading through the book Do You Trust Me?, and fixed two or three spots that could have been said better.  There is a rule in this business that if you wait until something is perfect it will never go to print, and I can feel the pain of that rule with this book; however, the reason for my delay is entirely that the cover art is not ready (which seems to be a reason that delays most of my books at some point), so the fact that I am still tweaking the text is not an issue.  I do have to format it to page size and add the page numbers to the table of contents, but that will come soon enough.

I have been giving serious thought to combining the three books, Do You Trust Me?, What Does God Expect?, and About the Fruit, into one volume, tentatively entitled A Christian Primer.  I could sell the one book for less than the three individually, and I think that they fit together in a coherent package.  I am minded in this that C. S. Lewis originally published the three books we know as Mere Christianity separately–somewhere I have a copy of the second, Beyond Personality–but that combined they make a coherent whole.  From a marketing perspective, the single volume would probably cost the reader less than the three books separately without impacting my profit.  I would keep the individual books available, though, because someone interested in only one would still be able to buy it (and then come back for the other two eventually).  Anyway, it’s on the table for consideration.  The Trust book has to go to print before anything will be done on combining them.

I accomplished something.

–M. J. Young

I have been pressured by several people who want to know when the blog will return.  I have wondered that myself.  Can’t you, they ask, write the blog without talking about the people who don’t want their lives made public?  No, I can’t, really, because the blog makes my life public, and they are part of my life.  There’s not much I can do about that.

Well, there is, really–I can stop talking about “my life”.  The point of the Blogless Lepolt, ultimately, is to let you, the Valdron/Multiverser fanbase, know what is happening with forthcoming product.  It is incidentally to let what might be called the Mark Joseph Young fanbase know about my other creative work being produced outside the Valdron/Multiverser stable.  In all this time, it has also been a place for talking about what has been in the way of producing such work, and thus the events and distractions of my personal life.  Part of that was because I was writing this every day, and I wasn’t getting anything done every day (or sometimes even every week), so I had to say something, and I felt I had to explain why there wasn’t any time to get something done every day.  One of the comments noted that this was something of value to him, to have some understanding of the conflicts that prevented me from writing so much.  That, though, is the part that gets personal–and thus the part that has to go.  Similarly, since I’m not going to be explaining why things have not been done, I will no longer be writing the blog daily–there will be posts when there is something to post; it won’t always be much, and it won’t always be very informative, but at least it won’t be about the progress I did not make.

It will also move that last blog post off its prominent position on the front page of this site, which will make me feel a bit better.

All of this suggests that I have something to tell–and indeed I do.  As I have been typing, I have realized that there is more than one thing to tell.

The impetus for resuming is that there is a new page in the Bible Studies section of M. J. Young Net, On Sabbath.  The brief story behind it is pretty much stated on the page as an introduction.  For those curious as to how someone who has always “regarded all days the same” justifies being part of a Seventh Day Baptist church which very clearly “regards one day above another”, there’s some insight into that there.

As I was typing, though, it occurred to me that I did not mention having made progress on the Multiverser Triple Play:  Horror.  I did what I am hoping will be the last text edits (and neither Jim nor John have commented on them, so I’m feeling fairly secure in that hope).  That puts the ball in the court of our art director.  He, however, takes an extended visit to family overseas every summer, so he might not get to the artwork as soon as he would like.

There was a third thing that came to mind while I was typing, and that is that Collision, the band, now has its own MySpace site.  There’s nothing there yet–not even a picture of the band, and no music–but it’s a start.  I had been thinking it was a necessary step, but that I did not have the time to do it and we weren’t really ready for it, when Baxter asked me about it.  He and Brittany have been overseeing it (I’ve not yet even had the chance to log in to the editing page–but I’m not particularly good at maintaining MySpace sites), and it’s progressing.  What do you think–should our lyrics be posted there somewhere, somehow?

Anyway, that’s the situation.  I will post again when I have something to tell.

–M. J. Young