I had a couple of shows this weekend.  The Sunday show was in a really nice auditorium.  It was in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, so it was even more awesome that they had such a well-developed room.  Then on Monday we had the orchestrated trainwreck.  Butler's showchoir (the Headliners) were doing an exchange show with the K-State Singers at K-State.  Butler performed first, then KSS did.  Both groups have separate sound systems (monitors and mains), separate bands, and separate stages.  So during the intermission, Butler's stage had to be taken away quickly while KSS stage had to put on quickly.  This denied the KSS a proper soundcheck.  And nobody noticed that the piano was unplugged.  That became very quickly apparent.  And it ended up working out well.  And best of all, I got to see miss Kayla and got a proper hug.

I liked talking with another sound engineer.  I usually go to Tyrone for advice, so just talking with another guy as an equal was a pretty powerful experience for me.  Today was kinda slow, so I went to do some fix-ups on our equipment in the afternoon.  And pretty soon I'll be heading back to work.  I'm currently reading the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook, and I love it.  Even though they have current traveling in the wrong direction and they use E to represent the electrical potential instead of V.  It really is a very useful book.

The man who dropped the first nuclear bomb in anger, Colonel Paul Tibbets, died yesterday.  I feel saddened because I never think of what the scientists and military people who worked to bring the atomic bomb into existence are doing today.

It's almost a weekend.  And it's shaping up to be a busy one.  Football game, musical, and 2 concerts.  I certainly feel ready for nap.  I think I need to get my list of addresses updated so I can send out Christmas cards.  And I got 3 big bags of fun sized Skittles.  They make me happy.

So it's Halloween night, I'm dressed up in my tuxedo, dark sunglasses and a curly, clear earpiece trailing down my neck.  And where am I?  I'm sitting in my dorm, because I have nothing to do tonight.  And why is this so?  It's quite simple: I work almost every night.  Having a night off when there are actually things to do is extremely foreign to me.  I wanted to go to Coldstone for some ice cream, but I couldn't find anyone to go along.  I think I'm going to get dressed in something really comfortable, screw off on the Internet, and then go to bed and nice, ripe time of 11 PM.  I hope you had a scary and profitable Halloween.

I think I did well on my test today.  I feel like it went well, anyways.  So instead of working ahead on homework, what am I doing?  I'm playing around with new computer programs.  And now I've finally figured out what Inkscape does.  It's a cross between Paint and Photoshop.  Precision of Photoshop, freedom of Paint.  It's a free program, and it's fun to play around in.  And now that I'm in such a good mood, I think I'll start in on that homework.

A quick picture I drew with Inkscape.

I'm drooling.  Literally.  I just got an email from some Sony mailing list about Sound Forge.  Oh, how I want that program.  I have a very, very old version (I think it's 2.X) from before Sony bought the rights to it.  Music Studio was only $60 or so, and it's nice, but it's a little funky to do some of the things I want to do, and it's more for mixing things together rather than recording totally new sound.

I'm taking a microcontrollers class right now.  And $60 is the hex address where RAM starts in a FreeScale HCS08 chip.  So anytime I have to right $60, I think I'm supposed to follow it with dc.b 1.  But then the urge passes.

I must have slept really funky last night, cause I ended up with my pillow on top of the covers at my knees.

The K-State Singers have a show coming up this Friday.  Since I am running sound for the concert, I need as much face time with the group as possible right now.  So when I got a couple of calls from my mom yesterday during rehearsal, I ignored them at first.  But when she kept calling, I decided I should check what was up during one of the breaks.
Now before this turns into a horrendously long, step-by-step recount of the process, here's what happened in short: She couldn't get in touch with my sister after getting an odd message earlier in the day.  Turns out her car had to get towed, and my father just didn't pass the message along.  Also, the sister failed to contact anyone else except for the father, who is notorious for failing to communicate.  And lastly, the mother failed because she didn't check the sister's class schedule to see that she was in a lab at the time and wouldn't be able to answer her phone anyways.
But I still had to skip about 45 minutes of my much-needed face time with the Singers and got all worked up.  Luckily, it was over nothing, so I should be happy.  And on some level, I suppose I am.  But I also want to prevent this from happening again.

A lady from my hometown church choir is coming up today.  It'll be great to see her.

Hey, why not go try out the new home page Xanga is working on?  It'd make me feel better if you were looking at it.  And I kinda like it so far.

I worked a lot this weekend.  Luckily, I already did a large portion of my homework.  Unluckily, this means I should be doing the rest of the homework instead of blogging here.

The showchoir I work with has a show coming up on Friday evening.  Which is slightly worrisome, because I don't know any of the songs they'll be singing.  And since I'm supposed to balance the music out, that could be a problem.  So for now, I have the accompaniment tracks playing on a continuous loop.  However, I know they've cut some parts out of those, and added some others, so it won't be perfect.  But there's nothing like walking into a concert blind and making it up as you go along.

I think I'll get a flu shot this week.  I'm going to be seeing a bunch of people each night for the rest of this calendar year, and most nights next semester also.  But I haven't had a flu shot in a longer time span than I can remember, so I'm not exactly certain I'll do it.  Still, I don't want to get sick in the first place, both to spare me the downside and to avoid infecting anyone else unavoidably.

Two years ago I learned the joy of skittles.  They are a candy I generally don't get, because they have no peanuts in them (a Pay Day is always awesome).  However, they are one of my favorite candies in the world, which isn't saying much, because I don't like candy very much, especially chocolate.

Tonight I went to Walmart for some zip ties (oh, the blessed little things), and decided to get a bag of skittles.  It's fun to have candy I can offer people when they come to visit, but I'm still going to keep most of them for myself.  And it's nice that the weather is cold enough that I can open my window to cool the room down.  Still need to get a haircut, though.  And a flu shot.

I've been a legal adult for almost 3 years now, and I have yet to do any of the flashy things associated with coming of age.  To date I have: acted as an adult at a church youth camping event; watched an R rated movie; purchased a knife.  I have not purchased spray paint, cigarettes, lottery tickets, plane tickets, a hotel room, pornography, or gone to a bar or club.  On one hand, I do want to make use of this "freedom," but I know that as soon as I get into a club or bar, I'll want to leave.  Also, the rest don't really appeal to me.  So really, why would I look forward to coming of age?