We had two shows today.  One was in the student union and one was at a hotel.  The hotel had a really bright and echoey sound.  However, at the union, they didn't leave space for a sound  board in the audience.  Instead, we stuck me in my little cubicle backstage, with headphones and earbuds to try to mix.  After getting the volume loud enough, I think it went as well as could be expected.  However, I am going to try to talk to some people about getting a space cleared out for my use.  My laptop is still locking up when I try to record, though.  I hope to get it fixed by the end of the calendar year.

I turn twenty-one years old in the next six months.  Anyone want to suggest some drinks for me to try when I hit that mark?

Xanga has started compiling the Featured Content descriptions in a weblog at http://weblog.xanga.com/featuredweblog.  Now as you might know, I am prone to ignoring my subscriptions for a few days at a time.  Luckily, I was up to date this time around.  But since the Xanga team put all the old descriptions up at once, my subscriptions browser was full of featured weblog descriptions.  It took a little longer than usual to wade through all the old subscriptions, but I still like this new system.

The K-State Singers have two concerts tomorrow.  For the first concert, there's no room to put me in the audience, so they're going to try to fit me backstage.  I'm going to talk to the people in charge of the concert (luckily, it's for a university office, so I can just go to the administration building) to see if they can rearrange the seating plan to get me out in the crowd instead of mixing through headphones only.  If it can't happen for Monday's concert, I'm still going to try to impress on them the importance of having the sound engineer in the crowd.

I got this laptop so that I could take it "on the road" with the K-State Singers and record their shows.  Yet when we got to our show yesterday, I found that my computer froze hard each time I tried to record.  I got an update from a website somewhere, and it's fixed now.  Luckily, there are two shows tomorrow for me to work with.  Speaking of yesterday's show (which was in Paola, KS), I really like the acoustics of that room.

They do need an upgrade on the lighting system, though.  They have a backstage panel with levers that directly control the current to the lights.  Those of you with theater experience will note that you really don't want to stick your fingers in live light sockets.  I was glad to see the light "board" (it's about the size of a port-a-potty), because I've never seen one either in real life or in a picture.  I appreciated the experience and will treasure it as any good techie might.

I was going to post about how I really don't like Vatican City or the current pope's views on the geocentric theory, but I've had a few hours to calm down.

In February of 2009, analog television will cease to broadcast.  Satellite and cable subscribers shouldn't see much if any change in the way things work.  If you're like me and just use rabbit ears, however, you're either going to have to resort solely to videos or purchase a converter.  Most of the attention is usually focused on the fact that people will have to get converters.  I want to draw your attention to another aspect of the change.

When broadcasting of analog television stops,  a segment of the electromagnetic spectrum will be freed up for other uses.  The FCC is auctioning off this frequency space around 700 MHz to companies (I suppose an individual could purchase one, but the prices involved are in the high hundreds of millions to billions of dollars).  This opens up the opportunity for all manner of new devices for consumers to purchase.  New cell phones with better ranges (think of all the places you can get TV signal), wireless Internet, et. al.

As a sound engineer for live systems, I must admit myself concerned.  Wireless microphones don't really have any frequency dedicated to them.  Instead, wireless microphone transmitters operate in the space that TV channels aren't using.  For example, from my antenna I can get channels 8, 10, and 12 but no 9 or 11.  Wireless mics would operate in portions of those gaps such as 9, or 11.  But after the FCC sells licenses to these frequencies to companies, those companies might put some sort of system in place that uses the frequencies, which would mean that wireless microphones wouldn't be able to use them.  Luckily for me, many companies are expected to purchase blocks of frequency and leave those frequencies unused in order to protect their cell phone lines.  If a new company was allowed to buy a frequency block and build a competing service, the large cell service providers would lose a lot.

So I am concerned, but I am also hopeful.  And on the bright side, I don't have to worry about it for another year.

I am unhappy with Windows Vista.  Just a few minutes ago, I decided to reboot my laptop.  When it loaded, Trillian (my instant messanging program) hung, and I couldn't even close it down by ending the task in the Task Manager.  So, I attempted the logical move and tried to reboot again.  And this time I got a blue screen of death.  Or, more correctly, a blue screen of a memory dump.  I didn't even know they still had blue screens of death, since I haven't seen one since Windows 2000.

I have also been having troubles getting K-State's antivirus to work for more than one reboot, though it is doing slightly better right now.  A few days ago I was ready to just get XP installed on it.  I was not willing to give up the cool Win+Tab way to cycle through open windows, though.  Now I will be reconsidering my decision to leave Vista on this computer.

I decided in 7th grade to sign an organ donor card after a presentation the Lion's Club gave to my scout troop.  In the event that none of my organs would be usable, either due to my cause of death or my health, I would most likely not donate my remains to science.  Instead, I want to be cremated.  I don't really care what they do with the ashes, and to be completely honest, I don't even care if they actually cremate me.  Go ahead and donate me to science, just tell me that you're going to cremate me and I'd be happy.   

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

As my weblog states, I have a new laptop.  It is an Acer.  And right underneath the screen, the word acer appears in silver writing on the black background.  It is a very shiny silver, and it reflects.  By moving my hand around while trying to type one-handed, I noticed that these letters make a real image of my hand.  I like having a laptop.  It means that I can post to my Xanga weblog while there is nothing to do at work.  I really, really like this.

The weather is cold in my location right now.  Very, very cold.  And windy.  Kansas can be that way sometimes.  It's cold enough that my professors are complaining about it.

My university awards its students a three day weekend for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, despite having only held two days of classes.  And you would think that only having one class period of each course only, and having a full three days of no school, not to mention the better part of Friday with no classes, that I would have had plenty of time to do my homework.  However, you would think incorrectly.  I started my homework sometime around 11 PM on Monday.  Granted, all I had to do was order parts catalogs and write a couple of paragraphs about myself, but I still should have been working on it earlier, right?  Ah, the joys of procrastination.  And I was worried that I might have forgotten how during the break.

I tried out the Xanga TV module.  I don't feel like reading my posts to you guys, though, so it's not really going to turn out to be much yet.  I'll take recommendations and ideas, mainly to ignore them.  But then you can feel vindicated when I ignore them. 

The powers that be are trying to get a casino built near my hometown.  It's not in the town (right now), but they have to annex the land so they can approve the plan so that someone else can approve it so that the casino can actually be built.  And they want to build it less than two miles from my parents' house.  My dad is highly opposed to it, just cause he thinks it will destroy his way of life.  I disagree, but that's just what the big controversy is at home.
But now I'm curious what some of the Xanga community thinks: If someone tried to put a resort casino, including hotels and golf courses, practically right next to your house, how would you feel about it?

I got lost today. Well, not really.  But I did take a wrong turn on purpose, because I had several hours to spare and I wanted to drive around a part of town I'd never been in before.  I didn't find too much, but it was somewhat relaxing to drive around until I found something I recognized so I could return to the dormitory.  What struck me was a rare act of kindness.  I was trying to turn left right next to a stoplight, with the stoplight on my right.  There was a fair amount of traffic, and cars were backed up almost to the road I was waiting on.  And then a lady in a truck stopped far back from where one usually would for a traffic light so that I could pass through.  I greatly appreciated it, as otherwise I would have had to turn away from the first recognizable landmark I'd seen for several minutes.  And it's nice to know that there are kind people who might be passing me on the street everyday.