ShadoeRyder's Korner

KCRF weekend 2

2009-09-14T16:21:00.001-07:00

Second weekend of KCRF has now come and gone. 5 more to go. This weekend was very odd for me. First I get an hour up the road Friday and realize I have forgotten something....my boots...not good for a pirate... But I AM an hour up the road and not really wanting to turn a 4 hour drive into a 6 hour drive I keep going. A couple miles later I remember a conversation I had with Jason the previous week about a pair of boots he had that he had only worn a couple times...so I call J and tell him what happened and ask him to pull those out of the closet I can at least try them on to see what happens. Turns out that in this particular style of a boot a size 10 boot fits my size 8.5 foot rather well... who knew... so the weekend started out mixed. When I get to fair Saturday morning I get about half way from my car to the gate and realize I have left my money in the car so back I go...not really an auspicious start. I finished the weekend by loosing one of my favorite pairs of pants. A pair of pants I had just gotten repaired which makes it all the more frustrating. But I now have two pairs of boots. One on in good working order and one I wanted to replace anyway(the ones I had left at home) but can wear for a change of pace.

Crowds both days of this weekend were a bit odd. Those who have done Faires for some time will know what I am talking about. Sometimes you get crowds who might as well be paintings. Try as you might you get no reaction from them during the show. It can very easily make you think you are not doing your job. Oddly enough often after the show these same crowds tip well and tell you how much they enjoyed the show. Which makes it even more of a twilight zone experience. This was for the most part the entire weekend. Parts of the crowds would be into but then part would just sit there and stare. Haha can make you a little unnerved if you let it.

But the best part of the weekend came at the end. Sunday at our 4:30 show Jason had a girl come and request a song. We said we would sing her that song after the show. But due to time and the next group being ready to get there show going that was postponed till after pub sing(stay with me I am getting there). After pub sing however a couple of the guys wandered back to the pub where we meet post faire day, so we all wandered down there where this poor girl finally got her song...

Which brings me to so far the highlight of KCRF for me. That one song turned into a 30+ minute song set for an increasingly crowded pub. The crowd that gathered was totally into the music. This particular song set was what I call music for the sake of music. The songs we did were the things we do not normally do on stage for the most part. As my bandmates put it, the purdy stuff. The stuff that shows off the fact that these scruffy looking boys can really sing. Which given the state of our voices at that point it is rather a miracle we could rip thru that stuff. But it also shows what can happen when you give energy to a crowd and get it back from them in return. The synergy of that is a wild ride. And frankly one of the reasons you put yourself out there on stage in the first place. It was a good ride and capped off nicely an otherwise frustrating weekend. And even though I had a four hour drive home to get to, I needed that time to remind me why I do this. That those moments are what as a musician you live for. When the people there want to hear you and show you that fact.

Anyway that "show" to me was the best show of the weekend. And the best moment of the faire so far.

KCRF! - opening weekend

2009-09-10T07:10:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was the opening weekend of Kansas City Ren Fair. We were out performing and will be there for the entire run. So if you are in the area come out and see us :)

It was good opening weekend. Crowds were good and the weather while hot was not to shabby. Not sure what the weather will be like this coming weekend as we have had rain all week here. A lot of the folks from OKRF came up and a good time was had by all. Was good to see folks you thought you would not see until the spring. I would name everyone but I would forget someone so to all my OKRF friends it was awesome to see you guys and hope to see you again before the run ends.

Also on the band front our new cd is out :) give it a look http://musicalblades.com/product6.htm

And heck speaking of I guess since I last updated around here we have had TWO cds. here is the previous one.. http://musicalblades.com/product5.htm this one is interesting as it contains the pirate core set that was to be done at the Shipwrecked Music Festival that due to the economy was called off. Also this has some of the live tracks from the Pirate Ball earlier this year.

Joplin Ren Faire and a new cd

2009-07-28T11:09:00.000-07:00

The Musical Blades performed this past week at the Walk Thru Time Faire in Carterville, Mo just outside of Joplin. This was the second year of this fair. We were in the pub the whole time so did not have to move around stages. Which for a guy who is coming off a major surgery was a good thing :) We had a great time with some old fans and made some new ones. Met some great new friends saw some old friends and are looking forward to next year.

Also our latest CD project High Seas Drifter went to the duplicators Friday! Release date is the first weekend of the Kansas city Ren Faire which is where we will be next. So come on out and check us out if you are in the area.

Greater St Louis Faire the first half

2009-05-27T12:34:00.000-07:00

The Musical Blades have been in Wentzville the past two weekends for the Great St Louis Ren Faire. Two more weekends to go there. It has been an interesting time. I have never been to that faire so I get to see somewhere new. Plus I have gotten to meet many long time MB fans which is also good.

Speaking of Monday finally saw the release of the new CD Live at Pubs and Pirate Core. Woot! We will have them at faire until they are gone. Then we will have to wait for more to arrive as we re-order.

Have met lots of great folks here and gotten to sing with some great musicians as well. Looking forward to the last two weekends.

If you haven't been out yet come on out and see us. If you have already been well come on back out and hang some more :)

OKRF

2009-05-13T06:28:00.000-07:00

These past two weekends The Musical Blades have been at Muskogee at OKRF. We had a blast. And hope to return next year for more. Will certainly miss the folks out there.

The Blades invaded the Queen's Tea hopefully providing memorable experiences for all who attended.

Next up for four weekends is The Greater St Louis faire so come on and out.

And we should have a cd releasing before the St Louis run is over. We are just waiting for it to come back from duplication.

Hope to see lots of folks in St Louis but if you are in the Muskogee area and cannot get up that far certainly head on out to OKRF!

wichita and stuff

2009-04-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

Weekend before last was the Great Plains Ren Faire. The Musical Blades were there sans Salty Pete who had to work in the real world. CURSE YOU real employment :( I feel so lucky to have a boss who understands and takes over my support duties on show weekends. But one does what one has to do. And when the real world job calls we have to answer.

Anyway I took the guitar duties for a weekend. A duty I will gladly hand back to Salty Pete at Muskogee. :) the shows went well and there was a fun moment when the cast of the faire attended a show and totally rock star'd us with home made signs. It was a fun time had in the cold , the wet, and the wind. the wind brought back visions of this years Noman Faire. Blowing tents down. Add to that in Wichita the rain which flooded a good portion of the faire area and Sunday started out pretty dreary. However the day did go on to get crowded and a good time was had by all. Can't keep a good faire down.

Got to meet lots of new folks and of course see some old friends. Capt Jack Daniels and his loverly Lass came down for a suprise visit on Saturday. that was awesome! Oh and I got a new drum to try out. Thanks Martino!

We( the band ) are working on a new CD due out in just a few weeks. So be looking for it :) I am excited as this will be my first cd project with the band.

Hope to see lots of folks in Muskogee and then in St Louis! Come out and rock piratically.

June 10th

2009-03-31T17:25:00.000-07:00

Is hopefully a very good day. As some of you know for the last three years starting just a year post my gastric bypass I have had some serious abdominal pain issues. Well after test after test after test after test... the doc says the only possible explanation left is the excess skin from the weight loss is pulling and causing the nerves to get annoyed. The solution for this is to remove that skin. So we submitted to the insurance to do that removal surgery and they approved it. So June 10th I will have that done. If all goes well that will take care of my pain issues. Doc says there is a 70% chance this will do it.

First Annual Pirate Ball

2009-03-02T06:29:00.000-08:00

Saturday night was the First Annual Pirate Ball in Weston, MO at O'Malley's Pub.
Doors opened at 7ish and the place filled with pirates. Picture the bar seen from PoTC in tortuga. That is what it looked like. Pirates everywhere in an old speakeasy basement two stories underground. It was awesome. Looking forward to the 2nd Annual Pirate Ball already.

the food was great, the drinks great - found an awesome rootbeer, the performers all rocked.

This was my first show with The Musical Blades and it was a grand time.

The ball was a total blast. Even though it was cold enough to freeze your rum. gauge in my car said NINE degrees when we left. brrrrr

Looking forward to a busy Faire season.

Wow long time no blog

2009-02-19T05:57:00.000-08:00

Wow i suck at this blogging thing. Although it is not like I often have a lot to say up here and I hate to sound just all rambling and such. Anyway what's new in my neck of the woods.

Recently joined a group called The Musical Blades and will begin performing with them on Feb 28th. We will also be at OKRF the first two weekends in May then off to St Louis for 4 weekends after that.

So for the most part other than that it is business as normal. Way to busy as usual haha. Back to kicking around in WoW but started a completely new account. So pushing to get to 55 so i can at least start a DK on any server I want hahaha.

Long time no blog

2008-07-26T14:33:00.000-07:00

Okay so it has been awhile. Been busy :) torn a tendon in my left wrist broke two bones in my right hand, cracked a tooth... good times :)

Anyway lots of gaming news lately. Went to TrollCon not to long ago and spent the weekend in Nerdvana playing Castles and Crusades. Was a whale of agood time. Also will be running some CnC for the Troll Lords at the upcoming Defcon here in Tulsa. Should be fun as so far the module I have created for the con has gone over well with my test groups.

Also getting the opportunity to beta test some games which is always fun.

Anyway right now pretty much in RPG heaven which I haven;t been here for a long time :) and I am liking it.

Tis the Season

2008-04-10T19:16:00.000-07:00

Ren Fair Season that is. Second show of the year was this past weekend in Norman,OK. Third is coming up end of the month in Joplin, MO. Got royally sunburned over the weekend but it is mostly faded. My wife still has some ugly spots with hers though. First time in YEARS we have failed in our sun screen diligence and we pay the price :) An elegant reminder.

Picked up a set of Crystal Stix at the fair as well. A form of devil sticks or chinese stick juggling. Even more addicting than my Sphereplay(contact juggling). Got some new contact balls too.. New 4" Acryllics, clear and a deep blood red. Also a 3.5 inch solid black acryllic. I like the 3.5 bet so far. The 4" ones are a bit on the heavy side but hopefully I can work it out with those. Also going to start spinning Poi soon heh. Lots of creative motion stuff. Gets me out of my chair :)

Random Blog post

2008-03-28T11:25:00.000-07:00

Figured I should post something since i haven;t in a while. Not a lot going on at the moment. gearing up for a couple more shows with The Twisted Blades, I think I mentioned that I was no longer in the pirate shanty group. what else..oh I did manage to file with my insurance and get a little of my depreciation back from the claim from the ice storm. the downside to that is all of that check will go to cover the air conditioning repair I am having done as I type this.. tell me why I bought a house again?

Something Old and Something...old hehe

2008-01-30T06:59:00.001-08:00

Good morning! Long time no blog. Seems like I get busy and the blog gets
lost. Anyway lets talk about a couple things.

First off the first something old..well new and old as I have done this one before :) this past weekend was Scarlet's Midwinter Festival in OKC. This is
the second year I have done this show. This year it was just four of us
doing the show. Our show was a piratical version of Whose Line Is It Anyway.
Think of it as Whose line with violence. A fun time was had by all, a new
superhero was born(long story heh), and general chaos and mayhem was seen
on stage.

here is a shot of us taken there

FOUR

On a darker note it seems like a year is my surgical limit. The second something old.. Having some more pain issues that more than likely will turn out to be hernia number 3. Have to do a CT scan soon as the insurance approves..yay.. what fun.

The Storm

2007-12-27T19:55:00.000-08:00

So by now most everyone has heard about the ice storm that ripped thru here a couple weeks ago.. well here are the pictures of my place from that storm

Storm Pics

Haunted Castle wrap up

2007-11-18T22:41:00.000-08:00

So my shanty/pirate song group Landloch'd just finished a month a Haunted Castle. All in all it went well. It was cold and I went thru far to many guitar strings for someone who plays folks music :) But it was good to get out and perform in front of people on a regular basis for the first time in a while.

We also just did a small thing at Boare's Head Feast and if all goes well sometime in the next couple weeks will be signing the contract for OKRF in May. Also hoping to get into a couple more fairs between now and then.

We will also be working on recording a 3 song demo and then working on new material. Fun stuff. keeps me busy. :)

The Haunted Castle gets LandLocked!

2007-09-12T20:43:00.001-07:00

The singing group I am involved in will be playing The Haunted Castle every weekend in Oct. I am quite excited. This will be our first time out as group. If you are in the area come on out and see us :)

Almost Normal

2007-08-19T19:48:00.000-07:00

We came home after church today to change clothes. While I was sitting here waiting on Diane the phone rang. Looking at the number I saw Richard Bregman, and thought wow a doctor is calling me on a Sunday? Must be a recorded message reminder or something. I thought it might be a recorded message telling me that my sleep test results were in and that I should call the office tomorrow something. Imagine my suprise when it was the actual Dr on the phone.

We went over some history for a few minutes then got the results of my test. Seems my apnea is down to 10 times an hour. Virtually normal...normal of course being none since it really isn't normal for people to stop breathing :)

He then went on to say I could try sleeping without the mask to which I replied good because I haven't worn the thing since the day of the test :) He asked how I was sleeping without the mask and I replied better than with it.

End result is he has proscribed positional therapy meaning he wants me to sleep on my side since my apnea is lessened then and he wants me to buy a book on insomnia and read it. the title is Say Goodnight To Insomnia and according to him is the best book on the market for the subject. I have it on order so we shall see when it comes.

But after 7+ years of sleeping with a mask I no longer have to wear it. Also at the doctor's strong suggestion I am on a quest to drop some more weight. He said with a 20 pound drop the apnea will lessen by 25 percent. haha which means if I can loose 80 more pounds it would go away completely. A lovely but impractical goal without some extra plastic surgeries to remove loose skin.

But at my lightest after surgery I was down to 235 until I had to go back on glucophage for a time then suddenly gained 30 pounds in a month without changing a thing other than taking that medication. Have since been taken back off of it but have been unable to re-loose all of the 30 pounds. But this now is my goal.

Sleep

2007-08-15T05:41:00.000-07:00

So lately I haven't been sleeping all that well. Not that not sleeping well is anything new to me :) Having slept with a cpap/bipap machine for several years I am used to not really sleeping all that well. But this was worse than normal so off I tromped to the sleep doctor. Who promptly ordered a new sleep study. Basically you go in and they hook you up to all kinds of monitors and watch you sleep and measure the number of apnea episodes you have during the night. Halfway thru the night they put your cpap mask on and start rotating pressures to see which one fits you best.

Had my sleep study last night and it has gotten my hopes up that I won't need the mask anymore. Cause the nurse never put it on me. I kept waiting but suddenly we were done and I had not had the mask on all night. But will have to wait a week to know for sure from the doc. Could be my pressure just needs to be turned down, could be I no longer need the thing. Here's hoping I can be free of the mask. Cause for one thing it will open up some oppurtunities to do things that don't require electricity like camping :)

Sometimes you bite off more than you can chew

2007-07-29T18:17:00.000-07:00

So the other day I look at the stack of DV tapes I have from the last years worth of stage combat performances and think.. wow you know I should capture all that to computer at DV quality then edit out a 5 to 10 minute highlight video and right some music for it. So I start in....64 gig of video files hehe. So now I get to load that up into Media studio pro file by file and clip out the stuff I want hehe...then toss away the remainder.

And somewhere in there need to capture my wedding footage to tape and render it out to DVD hehe.

Sometimes I just wanna kick myself hehe. Oh well it is a good exercise in editting and composing I suppose and will give me a chance to try out some new sample libraries I picked up recently.

new Virtual Instrument

2007-07-01T20:18:00.000-07:00

Picked up MOTU's EthnoInstrument this week. A collection of well...ethnic instrument samples/loops/etc hehe. Anyway got it installed and was just messing with it. This is all done in EI. Four instances inside Tracktion. Doubled the violin part, one for the Koto, and one for the PAD. This was mainly to see what could be done by just pluggin the thing in and playing without tweaking it. But it turned into a nice little not quite 2 minute piece. For some reason the setting sun came to mind while listening to the playback and so I call it. Lament For a Dying Day

Let me know what ya think.

mmmm

2007-06-15T22:24:00.001-07:00

Stale Pringles are good. That is all.

Little bit of this...little bit of that

2007-06-13T19:32:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been getting back into kicking around some electronica music..trance..techno..ambient..soundtrack.... May have already discussed this but I can;t remember and am to lazy to look back at the last couple of entries :) anyway for you listening pleasure... or displeasure give these a shot.. couple of hymns I have kicked around for The Praise Exchange on a ... hehe...whistle board I am on. The board mainly focuses on praise music using the Irish Whistle or Pennywhistle as some call it. The first track has no whistle but the other one does.

Fountain

Rise Up O Men of God

Now here is something I find interesting. I sampled one of my whistles. Built a soundset for a synth called Wusikstation and replaced the whistle parts of the previous track with a synth whistle just to see how it went. With a little tweaking this might actually turn into something useble

Synth Whistle

anyway give those a listen. Comment if you want. Not gonna hurt my feelings if you hate them :) They need to be properly mastered and if I ever decided to post them on my myspace page I will need to go back and run them thru some mastering effects to tweak the final mix a bit.

Practicing Medicine

2007-06-06T14:18:00.000-07:00

There really is a reason they call it that. Sometimes I feel like it is more throw the bowl of pasta against the wall to see what sticks methodology. So my tests all came back negative for indications of a kidney stone. Sooo back to the PCO and the drawing board. As of today my PCO is convinced it is something muscular in nature. Either a nasty pull or possibly even a tear. All I know is at the end of today exam the pain was intense enough I was seeing double. So he gave me some lortab and I shuffled off home. Basically it is grit my teeth and bear it time. If it doesn't get better in a week I go back to the doc for the next round of pasta and walls.

More Pics

2007-06-02T08:39:00.000-07:00

These are some of the promo pics taken for the upcoming Tulsa City/County Library Re Fair. Pirate themed this year.

http://www.shadoespace.net/TCCL/index.html

Muskogee 07 picture

2007-05-31T21:58:00.000-07:00

Here we go. Pics up finally

http://www.shadoespace.net/musk_07/index.html

Mixed Blessing

2007-05-31T04:45:00.000-07:00

So a few weeks ago around the start of OKRF I started get some lower abdominal pains again. These progressively got a little worse as time passed. Pretty much the same symptoms I had when I had my two hernias earlier this year. Two weeks ago I went to the doctor cause the pain had gotten pretty intense. Based on my symptoms at the time my PCO thought I might have a third internal hernia and so referred me to my surgeon. He also told me that if it was a hernia it was being caused most likely by my stage combat and that I should seriously consider giving it up. So I spent all the next week trying to figure out how I was going to tell my director/teacher that I had to quit. And given that I really enjoy this stage combat thing was quite depressed over it. Weekends at OKRF were hard by the end of the day. By days end every day I felt like someone had taken a ball bat to my groin area and sometimes even my back. Well yesterday I went to the surgeon and he did some further poking and proding and questioning. He determined that no he did not think this was a hernia cause much of the pain was in the wrong place. He had another theory that we are in the process of getting tests run to confirm. Kidney Stone..... so while I don't have to quit my stage combat(YES!) .. I will probably spend some time crying like a baby soon :) As I said..a mixed blessing. And yes...this to shall pass..(BaDADUM!)

On a lighter note pics from OKRF will hopefully by up tonight if I can remember to bring the disk home from off my desk at work heh.

Feeling Mellow

2007-05-24T20:52:00.000-07:00

Actually more like feeling depressed for reasons I will go into late next week. The reason I do not go into them now is honestly I am not sure who reads my blog and I do not want to reveal anything without talking with the person/s involved face to face. A few of you know already cause I have spoken with you about what has got me down. ANYHOO... I was messing around tonight with a software synth called Toxic III. Quite a nice piece. Worth the money I spent on it. Or at least it will be when I learn how to use it. So being in laid back kind of mood I fired up my new FL Studio 7 and played around for not quite an hour. I don't normally post what I like to call experimental or play tracks but since I am in a bit of a mood anyway i thought why the heck not. So here you are... enjoy

Mellow out

I got Shot!

2007-05-20T21:39:00.000-07:00

No not really but I got your attention didn't I :) What happened was this weekend at OKRF was Buccaneer Weekend so the pirates invaded full on. I am loosely connected to the crew that works the harbor area of the fair and they asked me to come storm the castle with them. I said sure... when we got there I borrowed a spare percussion pistol and a couple caps and powder charges and we waved our cutlasses and fired the guns in between shots of the six pound cannon. The Capt of the crew was like someone go out there and get shot. I was like I can do that so I went out taunted the folks on top of the castle a bit..ripped of a pistol shot and did a stunt fall when they fired back(which they were not expecting hehe)..was wild cause when they shot me the pirates went nuts and it was huge volley of gun fire.... couple other guys came out dragged me off the field and behind the crew so folks couldn't see if I had really been shot or not hehe. Was great fun and an excuse to practice my sit falls. Was also a lot of fun interacting with a couple of guys from on top of the castle. They play german mercenaries and they were like "Hey you are ze one we shot!" so we went on a bit about how we(the pirates) have a good ships surgeon and they failed to kill me. Again all a bit of good fun. One thing I really really like about Muskogee is the casts willingness to 'play' with patrons. Especially those of us who have come to this fair for many years. I always have a great time clowning around with Angus a rather large scotsman. And this year I have had several long conversations and interactions with the queen( got a couple cute pics of that today actually..the queen and a pirate...I smell a scandal!!!)

Another humorous incident today came with an interaction from one of the 'visiting' French royalty. One of the princesses was carrying around 'His Highness" a small frog with a crown statue. She came over and 'introduced his highness' and I started making bad frog puns. Looked at my friends and cracked 'Watch out if we offend him he will get hopping mad!" and they got worse from there but the princess went into a fit of giggles. Seems the rest of the populace just tended to look at her like she was nuts when she tried to introduce them to a frog. But I figure I go to the trouble of putting on the clothes and going to the faire I should have a good time. Plus it really helps improve the improv skills by interacting with folks who do it for a living. And it makes them pleased when someone can hold a conversation... now if I can just get that letter of marque from the queen.... one more week to go we'll see if I can get it.

This should be interesting

2007-05-16T05:38:00.000-07:00

So this morning at 11 I have to go to a photo shoot. hehe which for me sounds incredible funny. Tulsa puts on a Ren Fair each year pretty much aimed at children. However they are trying to move it toward more of a full on RenFair rather than a event for just kiddoes. Anyway this year we are Pirate themed and really any excuse to dress up like a pirate hehe. Also included in this is supposed to a be a few photos for the Harry Potter book release we are doing. We are going to be playing a game of live wizards chess(more or less) hehe. Ahh the odd things you get into while in a stage combat group. Of course really does it get any wierder than doing a Home and Garden show?

New Toys

2007-05-14T15:26:00.000-07:00

No not THAT kind of a toy get your mind out of the gutter...really.. And for once lately not a sharp pointy toy either hehe. New music toys. Picked FLStudio 7 and an M-audio Axiom 25 a nice little 25 key midi controller. I would link it but hey you can google :) Anyway those toys are what actually started my problems with my system. Seems M-audio doesn;t support ANY of there products on Win XP Media Center Edition. But to make a long horror story short my system is now back up and running on plane jane XP home. And I am currently in the process of downloading a ton(like 2+ gig ) of royalty free samples from The FLStudio page. Fun fun. Think I got all my VST/VSTi plugins reinstalled too. Now I just have to create a SATA enables boot disk and an image of my clean system.

OKRF - Muskogee 07

2007-05-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

So the second weekend of Oklahoma Ren Fair has come and gone. This is what I consider my home fair. And as I do not perform here I can just go down hang out and have fun. Socialize with those performers I know but am not tied to any one area or time. Quite nice actually. The first weekend I did not get any pictures but I did get some this past weekend. But I think i will just wait till the end of the fair and post them all at once.

Besides this weekend I am recovering from a massive system crash. Including my backup drive. Which means I pretty much lost everything. All my emails(so if you email me send me one so I can add you back to my list :) ) , and applications, and most importantly..my music files.. sigh.. that hurt the most I think.

Norman 07

2007-04-08T20:44:00.000-07:00

Well the Norman Medieval Fair was weekend past. Had some good shows. Good crowds..spent WAY to much money. Anyway here are a few fight pics and one fight video.. enjoy

http://www.shadoespace.net/norman07/index.html

http://www.shadoespace.net/video/Saturday_myfight2.wmv

Post Surgery

2007-02-23T14:16:00.000-08:00

After two weeks I am finally starting to feel a bit better. this one was rough. Pain levels were bad enough to take at least one or two big pain pills a day for almost a week and a half. Doctor still has me on limited weight for another two weeks which may force me to end up missing a stage show which will be annoying. but I suppose that is better than popping an incision..although might add a touch of realism to the fight eh? Slowly getting back into the swing of things. Today is actually the first day I have been at work all day. Pain levels are tolerable but still get fairly uncomfortable at times.

Surgery

2007-02-07T15:02:00.000-08:00

Doc went in this morning and repaired two spots. One actual hernia and one hole that was fast becoming one. So basically he repaired two hernias.Surgery went well. Nurses in recovery never had to scream at me to breath once. My blood oxygen levels stayed above 90%. Contrast that with two years ago with my gastric bypass when they would constantly drop below 50%. So hopefully this will get rid of my abdomninal pain for a bit anyway. These types of hernias are quite common with gastric bypass patients and can reoccur.

and back to door number 1

2007-02-01T16:08:00.000-08:00

Saw my surgeon this past Tuesday and he is fairly convinced that what I have is called an internal hernia. These are caused when there are some gaps if you will in the way the small intestine lays and another loop of intesting pushes thru said gap and gets caught. Then it will slide out for awhile then get caught again. This is why most often this does not show up on a cat scan or any follow up scans unless you catch it on the day of flair up. So next Weds I will be going back in for surgery. They will go in with a scope and look for the places that could be herniating and close them up. This could however reoccur at some point but for now he expects to find two or three spots that need to be fixed. So I get a week off of work. Why is it that all my vacations always involve large amounts of pain? might be time to pick up a copy of Vanguard to play while I am sitting at home hehe

Scarlet's Midwinter Fair

2007-01-29T15:50:00.000-08:00

Scarlet's was this past weekend in OKC. Was on cast as well as performing with The Twisted Blades on the stage. Was a lot of fun as always. And very tiring as always :) here is a video of one of my fights from the weekend

http://www.shadoespace.net/video/Saturday_1.wmv

Next up Ren Fair wise is Norman then I get to be just a patron at Muskogee :)

Practicing Medicine

2007-01-12T21:14:00.000-08:00

heh well my CAT scan came back negative for a hernia. Which means the docs have no clue why I have so much adominal pain. Waiting now on a referal back to the surgeon who did the gastric bypass. Hopefully this is something that can be found and taken care of hehe.

New blogger New entry

2007-01-04T19:22:00.000-08:00

Welcome to 2007. Guess my year started off with a bang. found out today I most likely have what is called an Internal Hernia. Stems directly from the gastric bypass. Was pretty much a matter of when not if from what I have been reading. so next we get to a CAT scan....why they want to scan my cat when i am the one with the hernia is beyond me.... to locate said blockage..then fight with the insurance company to get them to pay for the surgery I will need to fix it. yay oh yay :) well it has been a year and half since some doctor has cut me open so I guess I am due :)

Argh - Sometimes it just doesn't pay

2006-11-30T19:14:00.000-08:00

So it gets cold around here a few days ago and I notice something. The heater and the defroster in my car are not working properly. No hot air. So since it was snowing today I end up at the dealership getting this fixed. Cost around 250 bucks. After sitting there for 4.5 hours I get out to my car in the very very cold and snow. Clear the windows..get in...start her up...ahhh heat..good... look around... no one coming either way and turn around put the car in reverse and gently tp the gas starting backwards...when out of nowhere I hear a horn and my car jerks sideways... Got hit by an employee coming out of the shop. Unbelievable ... did I know 500 Plus bucks worth of damage to the car. I have to go get a full estimate either tomorrow or next week. They say they will take care of it. We'll see. The guys manager did even blink when he came out and bascially told the employee it was his fault. for one thing based on the amount of damage to the car he was driving he was going way to fast for the weather conditions. A fact I can agree with since when the guy hits the breaks on the snow and ice the car didn;t even slow down before it hit me. I am just thankful he hadn't had farther to travel and build up more speed. My lower back is sore enough from the crank it got as it is... sigh.. should have just stayed in bed today I guess.

And we're back

2006-10-02T09:55:00.000-07:00

For some reason My blog went poof.. So here is a quick post to get it back up and running again. guess I need to update more often hehe

new hobby

2006-09-17T20:17:00.000-07:00

In concert with taking up the stage combat I decided to take up a bit of leatherworking to help me get the peices of gear that I want in the styles I want :) Like many things after the inital buying of tools it is cheaper for me to buy the leather and make the piece than it is to just buy it outright as I am not paying for labor. On the downside I have to take the time to make it. But unlike some of my other creative outlets leatherworking doesn't seem as hard on my wrists/elbows. Which is good as it allows a nice creative outlet. Anyway for practice tonight I made this

http://shadoespace.net/leather/bracelet.JPG

Not a great peice but considering it is only about the third pattern I have tooled not bad hehe.

Shawnee Woodland Forest Festival '06

2006-09-11T16:18:00.000-07:00

So this past Saturday was the 3rd annual Shawnee Woodland Forest festival. A medieval/ren fair put on by a local SCA group. The Twisted Blades, the troupe for the stage combat classes I attend were performers at this fair. I was included in the performance. I did not get to fight as my fight partner was unable to attend but had he been there we would have been included. My first stage fight will happen just before my wedding at Stroud. But I was able to perform as part of three performances. Two on the stage and one we did just out and about. I will post some pictures as soon as my desktop returns from Gateway(a whole OTHER story). We did a Fractured Fairy Tale version of Sleeping Beauty twice and Hamlet in 15 minutes once. For sleeping beauty I was an evil hechman and for Hamlet the Dead King of Denmark hehe. Was great fun. here are the pictures

http://www.shadoespace.net/shawnee06/index.htm

Stage Combat and music

2006-08-24T21:03:00.000-07:00

Interesting combo in the title eh? hehe. Well my stage combat education proceeds. I am now a part of the cast at the Stroud Medieval Faire. I will have one fight there this year. Will perform the fight twice in the weekend. Otherwise I walk around talk to folks as a city guard.

Music wise still whistling. and oddly enough I had a dove award nominee hit my myspace page and add me as a friend. That was nifty.

Anyway that is about it going on at the moment. Work is hectic as I am splitting time between the dev group and the hardware group. The hardware guys are really short handed so I am answering the helpdesk phone. Problem is while I am doing that I get very little dev work done. Everytime I get cranked back into whatever development I am doing the phone rings. Hopefully this won;t last to much longer.

It Begins

2006-08-10T06:02:00.000-07:00

Well actually it began a couple of months ago :) I started taking classes in stage combat. IE how to swing a sword and someone and look like you mean but without actually killing them :) Lot of fun and a suprisingly strenous workout.

Anyway last night I was partnered up with another member of the group and we began to work on what will be my first on stage fight. I get to be the bad guy MUHAHAHA heh. It should be great fun. Arms are a bit tired from two hours instead of the normal one. Begginers classes are on Monday which is where I mostly go and Weds is when the troupe members work thier fights out for whatever event they have coming up. Last night was my first Weds. I am not an actual member of the troupe yet as this is my first fight so we will see how it goes. They are good people and seem to enjoy what they do a lot.

Wow Long time no blog

2006-08-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

Well looks like it has been awhile since I posted. This will probably be a quickie as I do need to get to bed. Get a wonderful trip to see the torturer....er..dentist in the morning :) got a couple teeth that can no longer wait to be worked on.

Doing a lot of whistle playing lately. Had the oppurtunity twice now to play in my church. So far they seem quite accepting of the instrument. Which suprises me a bit in a way.

Thought I had everything fixed with my tub plumbing but I still seem to have a tiny leak. Gonna have to call the plumber AGAIN..sigh. this is getting ridiculous.

Anyway just a short update. Off to beddie bye

Of Cox Cable and the Internet

2006-06-24T17:30:00.000-07:00

So last week I called Cox to have them set up the transfer of my account to the new house. Told them I needed service at the old house until the day before the transfer(This COMING Wed). THey said not a problem and sceduled the turn off here for next tuesday. However last Weds a technician shows up at my house and shuts me off. This is about 6:30.. so I call them and say hey you need to turn that guy around and have him come fix what he did. They said they would and that he would be there before 8... no technician..so Weds night I call and they say "We're sorry we will have somethere there tomorrow" But the time frame is 8 am to 8pm. But no one need be there as it is a tag only reconnect. 8pm rolls around Thursday...nothing... back on the phone. "We;re sorry sir we show no work order for that address today".."But we ASSURE you someone will be there Friday".... Friday 8pm rolls around.. I am on the phone.. Where is the techincian."Sir that work order shows completed." Really then wanna explain why I still have no internet and cable?" We Don't know sir but our technicians don't work after 8. We ASSURE you someone will be there Saturday"..... Saturday 5 pm rolls around.. I finally get the automated call from cox. The guy that shows up is some sort of team lead. He tells me right off the bat he is here because three other technicians had already been here. So as he is working I give him the whole story. He seemed upset about the call that was marked completed but obviously was not. Anyway he gets me turned back on and tells me I need to call Cox and ask for a credit to my account. Which I do.. then the technician on THAT END.. switches the boxes to the new house and tells me my cable TV will be going out again till MONDAY!!!!!!!. SO sorry....nothing can be done till then.

At least my net is still on. Right now the cable boxes are still functioning but this is BEYOND ridiculous. The crap I am having to go thru is beyond silly. If I worked my customer service at my job like this I would have been fired long ago. But they don't care. They really don't. Sigh....

The Menagerie has a new home

2006-06-19T21:36:00.000-07:00

So as of today... I am a home owner. We closed on the house this afternoon. Took about an hour to get all the papers signed. Then we sat...for an hour and a half we sat and waited. First we needed the last supplemental signed by the owner... a paper he had for FOUR days prior to closing. Then we had to wait for the lending company to approve the transfer of funds. Was ridiculous. Just sat there twiddling our thumbs forever. But it is done. I am officially in debt way beyond anything I have ever been before hehe. On the bright side closing costs came in lower than expected and my monthly payment is slightly lower than quoted.

New Addition to the Menagerie

2006-06-17T23:38:00.000-07:00

So about a week ago now I adpoted a one year old male ferret. His name is Hermes Check him out

http://www.shadoespace.net/pets/hermes.JPG

Gotta love the system reinstall

2006-06-11T22:07:00.000-07:00

So after finally getting fed up with IE 7 beta 2 I decided I would go back to IE 6. Hmm nope. Tried to uninstall 7 but IE is so integrated with the Windows OS apparently one cannot install it. Tried to reinstall 6 over top of 7 but you get a nice little.. there is a newer version already present ... message and setup exits. Then out of nowhere I start getting absolutly bombarded with Spam and spyware messages.. I mean every 15 seconds. So after about another hour of trying to clean everything I gave up and reached for my restore disk. System is back up and running but it will take some days to get everything reinstalled. grrr.. sometimes I hate windows.

Oklahoma Renassaince Festival Pictures

2006-06-01T08:31:00.000-07:00

Final Pics Coming soon

2006-05-31T21:46:00.000-07:00

I will get the last two weekends worth of pictures from the fair up soon.

Also I am soon to be starting two new classes next week. On Weds I will be taking a class called Tai Chi Weapons for Fitness with my lady :) That should be fun. But on Monday I start taking Stage Combat classes starting with the broadsword. Fun Fun.. can't wait.

Weekend Number TWO

2006-05-14T19:53:00.000-07:00

Okay here are the shots from this weekend. I also picked up a new pistol and a cutlass so I look very piraty now :)

http://www.shadoespace.net/Musk_06/13/index.html

http://www.shadoespace.net/Musk_06/14/index.html

PICTURES!!!!!

2006-05-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

Here we go..

Day 1
http://www.shadoespace.net/Musk_06/06_06/index.html

Day 2
http://www.shadoespace.net/Musk_06/07_06/index.html

Its Time

2006-05-05T20:24:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow morning we head to Muskogee for opening day of the Oklahoma Renassaince Fair!!! Woot. and me with three sets of batteries and 2gig worth of SD card space... INCOMING PICTURES!!!!!

Music

2006-05-02T21:59:00.000-07:00

So after being prodded by several people I have started a myspace account to slap up a music file or two. Right now there is just one file up on the site but hopefully some more will go up soon

http://www.myspace.com/edmillermusic

Really need to fix the drums in this track and re-record the solo as it clips out a bit I noticed. But anyway if you give it a listen let me know what you think.

House buying

2006-04-29T21:30:00.000-07:00

The house buying proceeds ahead. All the inspections are done and we are waiting on the reports. The appraisel is done and we are waiting on that. Both those should be in monday or tuesday. We had the termite inspection done and that came back with a clean bill of health there. No termites nor evidence of a previous infestation. There are a few things we want the sellers to fix like a touch of woodrot in the bathroom but nothing major. So as long as the appraisel comes back good we should close end of May.

Be afraid hehe

2006-04-23T11:22:00.000-07:00

Some of you know I play the Irish Whistle. Also know as the tin whistle or penny whistle. Some of you may have seen such instruments played if you went to or watched Riverdance. ANYWAY... there are a few different keys of whistles that I really want to try but some of these costs more money than I have to spend currently. So I am going to try to MAKE them. That is right I am going to try to construct an actual playable musical instrument. I think I am probably nuts :) But hey everyone needs a hobby. In my case I need several :)

Painful adjustments

2006-04-11T20:47:00.000-07:00

Here's the deal. A couple months back I started developing some rather harsh elbow aches and pains. And then my fingers started going numb again. So I trolloped off to the doctor and got it checked out. Tests (the EMG medieval torture test) came back with no nerve damage but the doc was saying because of my activity level the nerves were irritated. So I had to cut back on my activities that use the elbow a lot and I have to make sure I sleep with my arms straighter and not bent up under my head. So I have had to cut back on my guitar playing. But I have moved back to the Irish Whistle. Not a lot of elbow movement and long as I don't play longer than 20 minutes before a break I seem to do fine.

Which right now in all honesty is fine with me. I have really rediscovered my love of this instrument and desire to learn it well. Have even started writing some stuff on it and may lat downa few tracks next week to see how it sounds with whistle and guitar. Should be fun and different :)

Tis that time of year again

2006-04-01T19:42:00.000-08:00

No not Christmas silly.. RENFAIRE season! Yes that is right time for me to dress in silly(well sillier than normal) clothes and talk in strange accents. My Scottish and Irish are getting better :)

Anyway today Diane, Myself, and another friend Robert all piled into my car and headed down to Norman for the Norman Medieval Festival. This is an annual three day free event put on by the Oklahoma University History Dept. This was the first year I have been able to go.

It was a nice fair. For something that has no permanent home so everything is tents.

There were a lot of people here. Being a free event they get lots of folks. The estimates I have seen is about 100 thousand a day. And that is pretty close to accurate. I was talking with the guy who was selling anoles(the north american chameleon) and he said there were 40 thousand kids at the fair on Friday alone.

We were there for about 5ish hours. I was excited because one of my favorite RenFair groups was playing. Scottish Mayhem. Then I proceeded to buy a new hat.(the one I am wearing in the picture of me and Diane). A musketeer style hat I had been wanting to get for several years now. So after carry the old hat in a bag for about a minute I decided to walk it out to the car. Which caused me to miss all but two songs of the Mayhem performance...grrrr

Caught a bit of Queen's Gambit as well. Now I am not terribly upset as I will get to hear both of those groups next month in Muskogee.

Also as I am writing this blog entry Diane tells me we got tickets to go see Celtic Woman on the 15h of this month..WOOT! So ..Riverdance yesterday, Norman Ren Fair today, Celtic Woman on the 15th, Muskogee Ren Fair all next month and in Oct we are going to the last weekend of the Kansas City Ren Fair for our honeymoon.... mmm a good year. :)

Anyway here are the pics from today.. not near as many as I will take in Muskogee

http://www.shadoespace.net/Norman_06/index.htm

Oblivion

2006-03-27T11:44:00.000-08:00

I don't normally make posts dealing just with the games I am playing but since i have not blogged in awhile I will make an exception.

Elder Scrolls : Oblivion came out last week and has pretty much owned my gaming soul since then. First of all I hated the previous installment of this series Morrowwind. Hated it with a passion. But by contrast I loved Daggerfall the installment before MorrowWind. So I was willing to give Oblivion a shot.

Glad I did. So far this game rocks hardcore. I have seen a ton of complaints about the game but I find them to be unfounded. For every person who says the "radiant AI"(More on this in a moment) does nothing I have seen it do tons of things. Game play take a bit getting used to but once you do it is pretty smooth.

The interface is byuilt for the xbox 360 and so does suffer a bit but nothing you can;t get used to.
Now back to the Radiant AI. This was touted as a new Artificial Intelligence scheme to make the computer controlled objects do things in a more natural manner. Supposedly unscripted. Now let me just say this. I don't care if the AI in my games is scripted or not. Just that it does neat stuff and let me tell you I have seen this game do things none other has done before. Or at least not this well.

NPCs will stop and talk to one another, guards patrol and change shifts. I have seen computer controller thieves attempting to steal things. bar fights break out etc. NPC hunting deer and when you take the kill they attack you cause they are mad.

But the neatest thing I have seen so far was last night. I was exploring a little bandit cave I had found and I came across two bandits standing near one another. I was stealthed and I dispatched one bandit with my bow. the second bandit came running after me. I ran around a corner and hid again. The second bandit came around the corner and stopped and was heard to say "Where did he go ? he was just here".. that is some quality immersion right there.
Anyway overall I give the game about 8 out of 10. And it wouldn't take much to push it over the top. And since Bethesda has released a modfication kit I imagine that will happen soon.
if you like computer RPGs give this one a try.

Long time no blog

2006-03-10T06:16:00.000-08:00

Hmm been awhile since I blogged I see. Falling down on the job. Not a lot going on really. Been sick with a sinus infection.

Other than that haven;t been doing much lately. Nothing really to write about.. everything seems to be status quo.

On a game front been playing DDO. Once you get into it and as long as you can get a group its a fun game. but there is NO real solo play at all.

WoW has become tedious and increasingly frustrating. The queque annoys more every time I get stuck in it..etc etc etc.

Hmm well it was fun year

2006-02-16T19:51:00.000-08:00

So I made it almost a year with no prescription medications. Today I went back on my glucophage. Granted it is at half of where i was. I am taking 500 mg a day instead of 1000. But mostly due to the nature of diabetes it is only a matter of time before I go back to that. It also means it is back to watching what I eat carefully and watching what happens to my blood sugar when I try new foods. And (sigh) it also means back to turning my fingers into pin cushions and regular checks of my blood sugars. Fun stuff.

Gentle Reminders

2006-02-14T03:44:00.000-08:00

Or in my case not so gentle. I got reminded the hard way that my diabetes while under control, is NOT gone over the last couple days. Sunday night around 10ish I decided I would have a glass of chocolate milk. Well not long after drinking it I found myself suddenly geting dizzy and was also very hot to the point I was sweating profusely. I thought hmm.. the milk must have driven up my blood sugars. I better check it to see.....imagine my suprise when the meter said ...63....

Now for those of you who do not know the range of numbers for normal blood sugars is 70-120. So 63 is low. Which makes me wonder where I was before I drank the chocolate milk. But I ate a little bit of crackers and peanut butter and they came back up. I went to bed and then off to work the next day.

Monday I called my doctor back to let them know that I was still having problems with nasal congestion and then drainage and that I was developing a cough as whatever I had moved down into my chest. I told them the cough was not bad and not yet persistant. Was trying to cough up what was in my lungs I guess. The doctor called me in some stuff to try me up and to help with what cough I had to prevent it hopefully from getting worse.

So I get home, eat a little dinner, then take the firt dose of the cough meds.... BANG... felt like I had just slammed home two double shots of jaegermeister. I mean I was DIZZY, shaking, and just generally feeling rather unsteady. I think my sister thought I was crazy when I asked her to get my glucose meter from my bathroom which was only about 5 steps from where I was sitting. But I explained to her that getting up and walking was probably not the greatest of ideas at the moment.

Get the meter , check my sugars, 140. High.. that explains it. And I decide to keep an eye on my sugar levels over the next hour. Preparing myself to pincusion my fingers. Ten minutes later my sugars had fallen to 125, then they popped back up to 135 down to 79 back up to 123 before finally stabilizing out at about 80. This was around 6:30. Now I was pretty sure by this time that it was the cough meds that had done it. Not positive but knew that at 10:30 when I had to take the next dose I would know for sure.

10:30 rolls around. I take the next dose and sure enough.. here we go again... up to 153 down to 81 back up to 135, down 123, up to 130 then down to 73. So we won't be taking anymore of that stuff.

I went to bed once they stayed at around 80 for three checks. I was checking every 5-10 minutes as this went on.

For those of you who are not diabetic let me explain what happens. Everyone's blood sugar fluxs. Its natural. When you eat and sugars(carbs) hit your system you body dumps natural insulin to bring the levels down. A diabetics body doesn't work that way. They either produce not enough insulin or two much.

I have what is known as Type II adult onset diabetes. I have never been on insulin regularly and only taken it like once of twice now.

My blood sugar problem though was that I would tend to fall down into the low end of the range more than the high end. I took glucophage for years to offset this. When my weight came off and my blood sugars stabilized my doctor took me off those meds and until Sunday night I had not had but the slightest of problems. Normally a little feeling of getting warm when i had something to sugary but things would drop to normal quickly like they were supposed to. You know when you eat a lot of candy or have a really sugary desert you get what is commonly termed the "sugar high". For a diabetic this feeling doesn't go away like it should.

And for someone like myself who is not insulin dependant those seeminly tiny fluxuations in blood sugar can have dramtic results. At one point last night was pretty bad. Much like being drunk. I was having to repeat myself and my typing was off terribly while trying to chat with friends on the web. And since I do not take insulin the only thing I can do when my blood sugars go up is ride it out like a storm.

I have always wondered what it is like with my friends who I know are insulin dependant. I have one friend who blood sugars get so high they are literally off the charts. She has the same difficulties but they don't hit her till her sugars get at much higher levels. We have been talking and I will ask her when she checks what her numbers are and just stare in disbelief that she cans till function mostly normally at her levels. She takes insulin every half hour her sugars are so high. But she has also been living with her diabetes since birth. Our bodies are amazingly adaptable so over time she has been able to function at those high sugar levels. Not always well but she functions. Its amazing really that she can do anything at all.If i had her sugar levels even once. It would probably kill me.

I sometimes wonder why again what seem to me to be small fluxes in the numbers effect me so badly. I can feel it when my sugars get so much as 10 pts out of whack or when they even get close to the low end. When I fall below 80 I can usually start feeling it.

I also imagine that part of my blood sugar difficulties over the last little bit is due to me being sick with whatever sinus thing I have had going around.

I was going to take today off and rest. But at 5:30 this morning I woke up and it was obvious that I was not going to be able to go back to sleep soon. But now at 6:12 I am starting to fade again. And I need to make the decision to go to work or not. I had originally thought I would not. Then at 5:30 I thought okay I am up I might as well go. Now I am not so sure but think once i get going I should be alright. Just have to take my glucosemeter with me and watch it over the next few days.

And gotta call the doctor and explain to them what happened and see if there is anything else I can take for my cough. Makes me wonder too if I we don't need to revisit some olds medication friends. At the very least I will have to watch myself a bit more carefully for a while.

The end of one journey the beggining of the next

2006-02-09T22:08:00.000-08:00

In 5 days I make the last payment on 22,000 dollars in credit card debt. 3 years and 4 months ago I started paying on this thru a credit debt consolidation service. I wasn't missing payments but I was at the point where my head was barely above the water line. So something had to be done. And it has been rough at times. Learning to live without the plastic has been hard. And I hope it is a lesson I have finally learned well. Only time will tell. That is the end of one journey....

The next ones begins. Most of you who read this blog already know but I am getting married Oct 13th - yes it is a Friday - of this year. To that end my fiance and I are beggining to look for a house and I am paying off her ring. So basically I trade one debt for another but at least with a house I can build some equity hehe.

And speaking of journey's begging I am thinking of taking up the Violin. Just to add another instrument to the things I can sorta play. Only thing I think I do really well is sing but I have been told I vastly underrate my guitar playing. hehe. I am a pretty decent hand on electric bass to but really vocals are my main forte. We'll see what happens with the fiddle. Mainly I want to try it in order to be able to play some Celtic/Irish traditional type stuff and be able to sing. Singing is rather difficult with a whistle in your mouth hahaha.

So if I add the violin that will bring my instrument list up to guitar, bass,harmonica,Djembe,Digeridoo(a little, can;t circular breath to play it properly), some keyboard, irish whistle, and violin. I also wouldn;t mind picking up some mandolin. Pretty much just like a guitar only backwards.. and only four strings hehe. But the top four strings of the guitar are the strings on a mandolin in reverse order. So either that will be really easy to pick up or extremly hard haha.

Sometimes it just doesn't pay

2006-02-01T23:21:00.000-08:00

To get up :) or get out or whatever. Since my surgery and using up all my sick leave/vacation it seems I can';t catch a break. Everytime I get a little built up something happens. Take this week for example. I was pretty good Sunday, but by Monday I was feeling kinda of blah. I had been having some sinus trouble but then Monday evening the fever started. My tempature would jump up to like 100 or 101 then fall back down again. Tuesday I called the doc and explained. Got some antiboitics and made it thru the day . Barely. By Tuesday evening I felt like I had been hit by a truck. Every couple hours my fever was shooting up then falling back down. As of this writing Weds evening it is still doing it. I Took weds off and will be taking tomorrow off. Which sucks cause it is a friend of mines last day at the office. But I do not want to give this to every one. So now I am burning up what little sick time I had built. Tomorrow I hope this gets better. ugh

Bigger is Better

2006-01-30T21:27:00.000-08:00

Well in some things. In this case...monitor screens. A friend of mine was looking at getting a smaller monitor. He had this HUGE 24" Sony Trinitron CRT that I had long drooled over. 24" wide screen HIGH definition monitor. Well tonight my flat panel went to a new home. To give you an idea of how big this thing is... it is 22" viewable with is 4 inches more side to side than what I had. Plus it is the same viewing height as my flat panel. I don't care that it weighs a ton :) check this out.. hehe wish I had remembered to take a comparision shot hehe

http://www.shadoespace.net/miscpics/PICT0010.JPG

YEA BABY! so I got this thing and right behind me is my 47" High Def television hehe.. hmmm

ramblings

2006-01-23T06:51:00.000-08:00

Haven;t posted in awhile so figured I would do some sort of update :)

Othello is about where he was last time. he will however now occasionally come out of his cange on his own. and he will allow me to carry him around on a perch. I took him in the shower this week and that was interesting. i bought a shower perch that I hung up so I would not have to hold the bird. Bathing is good for birds and many of them enjoy showers. It did provide time where Othello pretty much had to trust me. He sat quietly on my hand and would step up nicely when he jumped off to the floor. So we will probably try this again. He even would play a little in the spray. You think a wet dog looks pitiful.. you should try a soaked bird. has to be the most pitiful looking thing in the world hahaha.

On the weight loss front I am still holding steady at 240. Still trying to get off my plateau. Went and had my one year check up from the doctor. guess I should post my total one year stats but they haven;t really changed any from the last time I posted statistics :) So scroll back a few entries and you can find them there hehehe.

Wedding plans are proceeding. Still in the early stages but they are moving along.

that is pretty much it. not one of my more exciting or interesting posts :)

The One Ring

2006-01-14T20:20:00.000-08:00

So my fiance and I have been looking for her an engagement ring. I knew better than to try to buy it. We thought we had found one and she decided no she hated it. Then we finally found another band she liked but the stone we had put in it she hated the setting. I did to really it was pretty but the setting looked a bit awkward. So while she did like the band we decided to switch to a different cut of stone and mounting. She was pretty happy with this. Here is what we ended up with.

http://www.shadoespace.net/miscpics/rside.jpg
http://www.shadoespace.net/miscpics/rfront.jpg

Bird taming progress

2006-01-07T21:52:00.000-08:00

For the last couple of night we(Diane and I) have been able to have Othello out of his cage for a bit. I have to towell him to get him out of the cage. I turn the lights down low and he is then fairly easy to towell. Then once he settles down he will sit and allow some beak scratching and take sunflower seeds from me.

tonight quite to his suprise he ended up on my hand. He made a jump for mydesk and I stuck my hand out and he landed on it. So suddenly he discovered the hand was not so bad after all. We did a few hand step ups then went back to the ladder for his comfort.
And tonight unlike previuous nights after I put him back in his cage he would come down and take treats thru the bars so he was certainly less scared than the previous nights. Progress. I hat having to towell him though and as soon as I can make or buy a tall perch I will set that in front of his cage and open the door and let him come out on his own.

today I am One

2006-01-06T11:42:00.000-08:00

today is the 1 year anniversary of my gastric bypass. One year ago today I weighed 405 pounds and could barely walk around. today I am 240 and walk most days quite well. Here is a quick comparison shot of one year vs today

http://www.shadoespace.net/surgery/oneyearcomp.jpg

the journey so far has been interesting. I was actually physcially smaller than this a couple months ago but i have put on some muscle in my chest area from all the working out I do. this is a good thing.

I did notice just a couple days ago though a few things I do to still accomodate my mental bigness. I still tend to park for instance near the support poles in the garage because someone else can;t park right next to me making it difficult to get out of or into the car. I do this in parking lots at stores as well. If i can get an end spot i take it for the same reason. At resturants I still eye the booths carefully before sitting down thinking man that will be a tight squeeze. Most times these days it turns out to not be.

Anyway today is one year. it has been a long and painful one at times. We will see where the road leads from here. the journey has only begun. I still have a long way to go. I peaked at 170 pounds lost about three months ago and have been holding steady within 3 pounds of that either way depending on the day. Hopefully at some point I can kick off the last 40 pounds I want to loose.

BirdCam ACTIVATE!

2006-01-03T21:40:00.000-08:00

So if you are bord and feel like watching it check out my birdcam

http://www.shadoespace.net/birdpics/webcam.htm

The webpage is set to refresh every 15 seconds and the image is 640 x 480

This is just a test and I hope to have it set up to stream at some point. WOuld also like to be able to remotely access the panning motors so if anyone knows some good software for this let me know :)

Check out my camera and tell me how it goes. It will be active at least Mon-Fri from about 7:30 till 5ish. My work hours. And maybe other times as well if I remember to turn it on :)

More life with Othello

2006-01-02T21:45:00.000-08:00

So as you know Friday I got my adoptie Myers Parrot. A parrot who is quite the little shy one. I again admit to pushing a bit to get this done this weekend as it gave me a long weekend to work with the bird. That backfired a bit as my grandfather had to be taken to the hospital Sunday morning.

He is okay or at least seems quite fine. He had what the doctors think was a TIA or Transient Ischemic Attack. Here is a webpage on it http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/tia/tia.htm

Basically it was a mini stroke. Oh course to really determine that you need to be cat scanned withint 60 minutes. We missed that window by about 2 hours. But he is being kept in the hospital for the next couple days for testing... oh what fun.

But back to my birdie. When I was home this weekend I spent a considerable amount of time playing passive games with him. Blink Back, shy bird(looking away when he would look at me),
Had a fun espisode of blink back when I actually got him to copy my blinks.. both eyes then one eye and he would blink the same eye I did. Was quite fun.

On Saturday evening he started moving forward in the cage again. And he would take things from my hand thru the bars and even the occasional treat while I had my hand inside the cage. And we even tried a wooden perch step up and got one foot.

then Sunday I was gone most of the day but when I would come in I observed him playing in his cage. He loves his swing and really gets it going. He is a little tarzan. Myers like many parrots and conures are something of an acrobat. Several times I have watched dip his head down to get a peice of food and instead of coming back up the same way just keeps flipping around the perch till he is upright again. Or he will climb along the top of the cage hanging upside down hehe.

I have also shown him my cockatiel and shown him me scratching the tiels neck and loving on Sydney. This seems to have helped as well. This evening he would come to the front of the cage and bend his head down just like Sydney when he wants a scratch. However he would not let me scratch him. I did get a brief beek rub with my fingers though. And once today we got a full step up onto the perch.

It helps that I have found a treat both the cockatiel and the parrot love. Cherrios hehe. They love them.

Othello will now come just about anywhere in the cage to take a cherrio gently from my fingers. He moves back less and less when I approach the cage and he keeps coming down and making playing motions and wanting the scratch motions. But can't quite bring himself to let me touch him just yet. But progress is being made and at a much faster rate than anticipated. I am sure we will have set back but so far so good.

Life with Othello

2005-12-30T21:04:00.000-08:00

So tonight I got my Meyers Parrot. Meet Othello
http://www.shadoespace.net/miscpics/othello.jpg

Best as we can tell Othello is about 5 years old. We do know he is indeed a male. He has been DNA tested by the vet for determining sex.

He is in a pretty big cage. Not quite a full flight cage but rather large for a small bird. He is right around 8 inches long I am guessing. Since he is 5 years old he is full grown. One of the smaller parrots.

Othello was purchased by the previous owner to be used as a breeder bird. However parrots in the Meyers family(which include things such as the Senegal Parrot) are picky about whom they will form a pair bond with. And Othello(previously named Gizmo) did not bond with the female the breeder had. So apparently she got rid of both of them. The female of the pair was taken by another person and I hope that bird gets the loving home it deserves.

Me I got Othello. Often when you adopt a bird it is good to change thier name as they can associate thier old name with a bad situation. So as I already have one pet named Gizmo I opted for a name change.

So I adopted Othello from Positivly Parrots here in Tulsa. Run by a lady by the name of Mattie Sue Athan who has written several books on various bird species.

I originally found the ad for her adoption service in the back of Bird Talk magazine. And I contacted her. We began to email back and forth and after much discussion she felt this little Meyers would be a good fit for me and later for Diane once we got married.

So tonight after a little prodding to speed up the time I went over to Ms Athan house to meet Othello. While there I was also aquainted with her wonderful dachsunds(including one ultra cute puppy), Ms Scarlet(a scarlet macaw), her Military Macaw(beautiful bird) a black headed Caique, a coupld of Jardine Parrots, and a Quaker parrot.

Ms Athan was kind enough to sell me a cage as well since I did not have on currently large enough to house Othello comfortably and buying a new cage can be quite the expense.

So after talking with her and interacting with her birds and other pets Diane and I bought Othello home.

I might mention too that all the while diane has her new sugar glider in its bonding pouch hanging around her neck hehe.

Anyway I get the new bird home and situated and we go off to do some shopping for the rest of the stuff I need. hehe new pets are great but they are expensive to start. Once you get into it they are not near as bad but start up costs are killer hehe.

After returning home tonight I placed Othellos new food and water bowls in his cage and this is where we had our first adventure. Taking a runnign leap Othello bounded out of the cage , onto the floor and promptly under my bed.

After my very very careful moving of stuff he ran out from under the bed and I was able to get a towell over him and then safely back in his cage. But needless to say he is not a bird who is pleased with me. So we have a long uphill road to travel to solid trust but I am confident we will get there before to many months are out.

I will keep you posted on life with my FiDs(feathered kid)

Sleep Apnea

2005-12-29T22:19:00.000-08:00

Had a sleep study right before Christmas. Finally got in the results this week. I was hoping to be able to get rid of my bi-pap mask completely. That was not meant to be. The girl who conducted my study was the same one who did my study last time. She actually remembered me and her first comment was..."You've lost a lot of weight", I just laughed.

Anyway she told me she was pulling for me to get rid of my mask but that is she came in at the middle of the night and put it on me then in all likelyhood I would still need it. Foreshadowing at its finest. I really don;t recall actually drifting off to sleep but I guess I did. And I didn't have to take the Ambien. For my second study(this was my third) I had eneded up needing the Ambien to put me out. Anyway she did come in and slap the mask on me. :) I do recall waking up one time before she came in to put the mask on me and noticing that i was sweating. A good indicator I had been having apnea episodes... sure enough.

But the results are encouraging. When I did my first sleep study almost 6 years ago now I was having 102 apnea episodes an hour. Meaning I would stop breathing 102 times an hour. Getting close to every 30 seconds. As of this study I am down to 26 episodes and hour.

So maybe.. if I can push off another 40 pounds or so and get on down to 200 or lower I can finally be rid of the mask and sleep like a normal person again :) But then again maybe not because weight is not the only casual factor of sleep apnea. But it is a major one. Going to also start trying to do some neck strengethening exercises to see if that will help.

Oh and if you have a fast net connection check out my Cockatiels new daytime cage...and note Jeckyl checking it out himself in the bottom of the pic. This is an unshrunk 4 megapixel shot.

http://www.shadoespace.net/miscpics/PICT0021.JPG

On the birdie front I should soon have my third feathered friend or FiD as those who are avid in the bird companion world call them. I am adopting a Myers Parrot. It is just a matter of cooridnating with the adoption placve to get a time to meet and pick up the little thing.

Also tomorrow I am purchasing my fiance a new pet as well. She is finally going to get the sugar glider she has been wanting for so long.

Continued life with the birds

2005-12-28T06:40:00.000-08:00

After a good first weekend with Sydney yesterday was a bit of aset back. but an expected one. Why you ask? because I went back to work. So Sydney was home all day. Now he has jeckyl to chirp at and plenty of toys to keep him interested. But over the weekend he was accustomed to having me to chirp at as well. And Sunday we had a long conversation while I was putting my clothes away hehe. he would whistle and I would attempt to imitate what he had just done. Mostly I was successful. We played that game for about 30 minutes before he tired of it hehe.

I did go home to workout yesterday at lunch time so I took him into the front room with me after blocking off the dogs heh. I put him on his playgym right next to me while I worked the bowflex. Although he still seems very unsure of and maybe even a little afraid of his playgym.

he was a good little bird at lunch cheerful and playful. When i got home that evening though he was a little terror. Nipping and lunging and not wanting to come out of his cage. He did finally come out for awhile and was actually quite loving once he was out of the cage but was right beastly anytime he went back into it.

I tend to open the cage and let him climb around on it as he pleases while I am in the room.

this weekend though I am going to make some changes. I am going to get a bigger cage for him to be in during the day. And move his sleep cage to across the room. So he will know that he will need to behave to be put in the play cage area. Hopefully this will help to eliminate some of the cage territorialism I he has now. with a bigger play area he should be happier.

On the lovebird front we are working on not being freaked out hehe. jeckyl has done better the last couple of days. I only take him out a couple times a day for ten minutes or so. For one thing that is about all the attention span you are normally gonna get for training. And he has mostly sat on my hand and I have only had to chase him a couple time. Going to have to make sure I turn towards the bed though as he did give me a bit of a fright when he launched himself and the bounced off of the table heh.

But we are learning and hopefully soon jeckyl will want to come out just like Sydney does. One good thing is these birds already were at least partially aclimated to one another as they came from the same shop and thier cages in the shop were quite close together.

Diane and I are still contemplating going back for the other baby tiel we played with in the shop. he should be fully weaned by now.

New buddies

2005-12-23T22:26:00.000-08:00

So Tuesday I got home to find my newly adopted parakeet had passed away. There are numerous reasons this could have happened not the least of which is simple stress from moving. I suspect either the bird decided it did not like being moved so much or it was sick when I brought it home. But after just a short time I have come to really appreciate birds and the possibilities there of. So I went on a hunt and ended up with two new buddies. First... is a Blackmasked African Lovebird. Meet Jeckyl

http://www.shadoespace.net/miscpics/PICT0002.JPG

Jeckyl is my little hellion. He HATES being taken out of his cage. So we are going back to the basics on his training. I will start sitting at the open cage door and letting my hand rest inside the cage until he no longer percieves me as a threat. Oddly enough once you get him out of his cage he is pretty calm. But he is an explorer and still a bit frightened of the big mean ol' thing he thinks is going to eat him(that would be me). So he tends to try to escape. And he can put his tiny little self into some really tiny places hehe.

My other new buddy is this guy.. meet Sydney

http://www.shadoespace.net/miscpics/sydney.jpg

Syndey is a Cockatiel.. white faced mutation. All the cockatiels you can buy in this country are captive bred.

I bought both of these birds from the same breeder.

The reason I ended up with two birds is numerous. Once I seem to buy two of everything :) Two.. training one bird is hard. Two is not really that much harder since you train one at a time. In fact sometimes it is easier as the bird that is having difficulties will see the bird that is doing well get rewarded and will modify its behavior. Sometimes :) I am hoping that watching me walk around with Sydney will help Jeckyl realise I am not a danger. Jeckyl is in a huge cage for his size though so he has plenty of room.

But back to Sydney. I went to every pet store in town over the last couple of days to see what was available. I was actually thinking I wanted a conure of some sort as they are gorgeous birds. Or perhaps a Quaker. Something in the sub 1000 dollar range hehe. WAY sub 1000 dollars actually. The largest bird I think I ever want to own is around the size of an African Grey parrot.
Sydney being a cockatiel is one of what is termed a medium sized parrot species. Barely.. tip to tip Sydney may grow to as much as 12-17"... 12" is the bottom end for medium parrots :)

Anyway like I supsected I would.. I ended up back at the same breeder I bought Jeckyl from. This time however I had taken my fiance with me. As she is going tohave to live with this bird for as long as me :) We began to interact with the birds in the store.

oooo side story... yesterday I was in this same shop to get some seed and ask some questions. Anyway they have two conures. one Jenday and one Sun conure. Both of which have become quite standofish and the Jenday is mildly agressive in defence of her cage territory and according to the breeder doesn't care for men. The jenday was not actually bred by this individual but was aquired. The previous owner was apparently a male, and a drunk who whn drinking would flip towels at the bird.(grrr).. anyway the daughter of the breed terms this the bird from he**..... so while I was standing there talking with the husband of the shop owner I began also to speak to the conures. And slowly move closer to the cage... stopping at any signs of aggression and backing off till it stoped. I noticed that each time they were indeed letting me closer. To make a long story short by the end of about half an hour I had both bird taking food from my hand without even a hint of agression. The Sun conure even briefly hopped onto my should to retrieve a peanut I had placed there.

Today while back in the shop I successfully won the bird from he** over. I got her not only to continue taking food gently from my hand but she at one point moved onto my shoulder and peacefully rode around on me for about 5 minutes then casually sauntered off onto her cage when i walked past it. A victory for me :) the shop owner was shocked and commented that I was the only male that had be able to do that.

So a victory for my abilities with animals but not what I was after. Would love to have taken the jenday or the sun but Diane was not to fond of them. We did find several cockatiels we liked though. Three in particular one of which however was not quite fully weaned. Another week and he should be and I may purchase this bird for Diane as she absolutely loved it.

I however quickly struck up a relationship with the bird that by the end of the night was named Sydney. He was a bit aggressive when I first approached but at a tip from the breeder I gave him a quick neck scratch. He calmed down but would occasionally attempt to get nippy. But after almost an hour of interacting with different birds Diane and I both agreed that personality wise Sydney and I seemed to click. And his is quite nice to look at with the grey and white. Not as colorful as the Jenday or Sun but also much more pleasent.

There are still issues will we have to train on. He will need to learn his place in my 'flock' so to speak. And that he is only allowed on my shoulder at my pleasure not his. He already does the step up to a hand pretty well so it shouldn;t be long before he will do it on command and can then be allowed a bit more roam.

I have a playgym that I will sit near me so he can be on it when out of the cage. I am hoping to eventually train the lovebird to use it as well.

I am working on building up my collection of bird toys. Birds are quite intelligent and need lots of toys to keep them from getting bored. So they get one or two toys in thier cage at a time for about a week or two at the max. Then you rotate those out for a couple of different ones. I want to build up enough of a collection that they can each have about three toys in thier cage at any one time and won't see the same toy for at least a month or maybe even two with toys being rotated once a week.

Kong - a review

2005-12-20T07:46:00.000-08:00

Went and saw king Kong last night. good movie.. ticks me off ;)

Okay first of all I think anyone who reads this already knows the story so I will probably put out a few spoilers. Will try not to spoil any of the suprises that are in there though.

Why does this movie tick me off? Two reasons really... one.. as an animal lover I hate to see animal suffer. Even coputer generate ones :) Two... i don't like being reminded that man as a species tends to destroy that which he does not understand. And just who thought it was a good idea to bring a 25 foot silverback gorilla to New York? hmm man that has bad idea written all over it :)

So back to the movie.. its long.. probably a touch to long. Some of the fluff scenes could have been trimmed down.

But that not withstanding I didn't find myself while watching it thinking geez just get to it already. I did find myself wishing they would but that was just cause I wanted to see the big monkey :)

And Kong delivers. he is rendered beautifully and the human/gorilla interaction is dead on perfect with what we know of gorillas.

the fight scene with the dino's is great. Some folks I have seen though Kong a bit to jackie chan in this one but I felt it was about right. Also makes you wonder if the increase in size of the ape causes a corrsponding increase in intelligence.

There are a lot of nice touches in the film as well. Kong utilizing all four hands. There are at least two other skeletons of giant apes in Kong's lair. Implying his family.

the climatic scene(*could have shot the persons who cell phone rang during this) is heart renching.

There is one dropped storyline about 2/3 thru the movie. The character who up till that time has been implied to be important just vanishes from the story. and a few of the effects are not up to WETA standards. Andy Sirkis does double duty in this movie. both playing a sailor and doing the motion capture for Kong.

Anyway it is good. Go see it.

Petco is my Nemesis

2005-12-16T23:19:00.000-08:00

Most of you who actually read this blog know that I have a thing for animals.... prety much any animals. I own a veritable zoo. The current line up is two dogs, two hamsters, a rat, a chinchilla, a rabbit, a honduran milksnake.

EDIT : and a beta.. I always forget the poor lil fishy

Anyway Petco has this wonderful thing. When you first walk into the store there is a table sitting near the front. On this table is a row of cages with animals in them(duh its a pet store silly). But wait... this is the ADOPTION table... these animals are free. There is a mix of reasons an animal ends up on this table(I asked :) ). One it was returned, two it got sick or injured and they didn't want to put it back with the general population, three someone brought it in and left it. Now I also asked about the sick animals and what I was told was they have a vet they take all thier animals to. And that the animals on the adoption table while at one point could have been sick or injured they only put them out when they are healthy.

Which brings me to tonight. Walk in and what should I see on the adoption table but a quite cute little parakeet. Now I love animals but I have never beena bird person. But the colors on this particular little fellow I really liked. So once again I adopted yet another pet. I swear at some point my granddad will ask me to stop bringing animals home but so far he hasn't :)

Anyway without further ago.. meet Max .. oh and interestingly enough.. Max is actually smaller than pictured here. I took the pic with super macro mode so he looks a touch larger than he actually is hehehe

http://www.shadoespace.net/miscpics/PICT0001.JPG

Narnia

2005-12-11T14:02:00.000-08:00

Last night Diane and I went to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Hereafter refered to in this review as Narnia. This will also contain so spoilers so consider thyself warned.

The books upon which this movie was based are some of my most beloved books from childhood. I still go back and like LOTR read them occasionally. So I have to say I went into this movie with both great anticipation and great dread. Cause if they screwed it up I was going to be irked....a lot.... hehe

But happily that didn't happen. In fact they did an excellent job adapting the book while staying very faithful to it. My only major gripe is this... the cinimetographer watched the LOTR trilogy one to many times. Many of the battle shots are angle for angle taken directly from RoTK or Two Towers. This was distracting to me and helped jar me back to the real world from my happy place of finally seeing a favorite world brought to life. I have read too that Disney farmed out the effects for this to several effects shops and not just WETA. And unfortunatly in places you can tell. THe opening Blitz sequence is some pretty horid CGI for example.

But with that aside my only other gripe about this movie is minor. They changed a couple sections of dialog that I would have liked for them to have left. Nothing major and nothing that even detracts from the story. Just minor turns of the phrase I wish they had left in. For example when Peter battle morgrim the wolf in the book Aslan holds back the arriving helpers by saying,"Let the young king win his spurs", a reference to knighthood. And in the movie he says ,"no this is Peter's battle"... minor but I prefer the original line.

After the battle when Lucy heals Edmund there is a spot in the book where Aslan tells Lucy that others need her, she puts him off, whereupon Aslan simple calls her name softly. Lucy then realizes that she is being selfish, that Edmund is fine now and she needs to go helps others. This plays out slightly differently in the movie and I felt that particular object lesson was missing. Again not a major thing just something I prefer from the orginal.

Liam Neeson is good as Aslan but from the beggining I thought his voice should have been lower pitched that Mr Neeson's. Of course now I guess we know what happens when Jedi die hehehe. bad joke I know... but often you can hear more than a little QuiGon Jinn in Neeson's Aslan.

Oh yea one other thing and this may very well have been a function of the sound system in the theater I was in.. There is twice I beleive in the book where Aslan lets out a roar that is literally heard from one end of Narnia to the other.. and in the movie this does happen like once and Aslan even tells the girls to cover their ears. But what comes out the speakers was hardly earthshaking. In fact I have heard better roars from the lions at the zoo than what I heard from the sound system. but again this may have been the sound system and not the actual track from the movie.

Anyway overall I give this one an "A" rating. 4 out of 5 stars. It is NOT Lord of the Rings. But it was never meant to be. Narnia is it's own tale of epic fantasy. And yes I also know of all the Christian Allegory that is in it and I even enjoy that part of it. But I have seen WAY to many reviews of this movie already that just rip it for that. And for those that have read the book they already know all that and I see no real need to rehash that here :) Go see it. If you have read the books you will see Narnia come to life. If you haven't read the books go see the movie and then fo read the books after to get the rest of the story. But don't read them in chronilogical order. Read them in the order they were written :) the story is better that way :)

oh yea and one final thing.. the beavers rock!

More bugs :)

2005-12-04T22:44:00.000-08:00

The mad bug painting rush continues. I haven't painted this much in ages.

http://www.shadoespace.net/minis/BUGS/hop/PICT0002.JPG
http://www.shadoespace.net/minis/BUGS/hop/PICT0001.JPG
http://www.shadoespace.net/minis/BUGS/hop/PICT0004.JPG
http://www.shadoespace.net/minis/BUGS/hop/PICT0005.JPG

Long Time no blog

2005-12-02T11:44:00.000-08:00

Well not that long really. But things are pretty much status quo at the moment. Weight Loss is still at a standstill. I suppose I need to increase the workout a bit as decreases the intake would be difficult.. when you eat next to nothing it is hard to go to nothing :)

On a gaming front I am getting into the StarShip Troopers Miniatures game. Good stuff. So far I quite like it. but then have only played once. Been spending a lot of time building models for it though. both actual bought minis and scratch builds from various parts laying about.

I should probably post some pics eh? here is one of my mobile infantry guys

http://www.shadoespace.net/minis/PICT0008.JPG

here's a Arachnid Warrior

http://www.shadoespace.net/minis/PICT0001A.JPG

and here is another bug

http://www.shadoespace.net/minis/BUGS/PICT0020.JPG

Choices... good thing I didn't have to work today

2005-11-23T13:38:00.000-08:00

Oh before I begin this I guess I should inform my readership(all 4 of you hehehe) that my grandfather was able to return home yesterday after all. YAY. He is feeling much better. In fact when you ask him how he is feeling the answer has gone from "Well I guess I am okay" to "GREAT" yes my grandfather sounds like Tony the Tiger at the moment :) Heck even the dogs are noticeably more at ease.

Now on to my topic. Since I was sitting at home last night anyway I got to thinking. I need to pull out all my stuff pertaining to miniatures and organize it. See what I have...what I might need to get rid of ... etc. Sooooo I went out into the garage and made about half a dozen trips carrying boxes into my bedroom. My bed promtply vanished.....not good. But I sat down and got started still thinking a couple hours from now I will be done.. This was about 10pm. By 4 am this morning I had finally managed to clean off the bed enough that I could sleep. Everything is currently in a very large but slightly more orangized pile in front of my closet. Turned out this was a bad choice :) I have a LOT of stuff. But compared to a lot of my friends my collection of miniatures is..well...pardon the pun but... small :)

Anyway I figure at this rate another week and I might bet everything sorted the way I want. I have a medium sized box of just misc minis still on the plastic sprues... haven;t decided if I want to just clip the pieces off to a bits box or store them still on the sprue.

Next time I decide to reorg the mini collection someone smack me up side the head :)

Hospitals eww

2005-11-22T09:16:00.000-08:00

So I am out at Southcrest this morning with my granddad and sister. My grandfather is going in for a change to his pace maker battery. Not a big deal really. Except.... when they scheduled this they told us to be there at 7:30 and that it would be a one day thing.. in out done. So we get there and they stick him in one of the very uncomforatable presurgery beds. Get him all hooked up and all that.... then we wait. Nurse makes some cryptic comment about it being awhile. Yet the procedure was scheduled for like 9 am.

A little while later I get a call from our pastor. He tells me he was there at 7:30 but when he asked they told him the procedure had been RESCHEDULED for 11. Note the use of the word rescheduled... first I had heard of it. So I question the nurse. Who says no it was always set for 11. Really first I had heard of it. So we sit and wait... and wait... and wait. Finally I have to come home to let the doggies out. My sister was like go on I will call you when they finally come get him. Sheesh... and people wonder why hospitals are so hated.

At this point I am just waiting for the next phone call then back out. Oh and this has gone from a one day thing to at least overnight. The nurse was like oh no after the procedure he has to stay 6 to 8 hours before we can let him go home.... and since he won't even be done till around 1ish at the earliest that means they will probably keep him overnight. Which did not please him in the least. Not a big deal but the information we were giving spoke differently. This is the problem in today's world. Lack of proper communication. What little information you do get is normally wrong or at least incomplete. Irks me to no end.

MS Vis Studio 2005 Launch Event and the 30 day workout challenge

2005-11-16T13:36:00.000-08:00

Okay so the two topics in my title have nothing to actually do with one another but I bet it intrigued you ;)

As has already been posted on friends blogs(see sidebar links) a bunch of us attended the launch event for Visual Studio/SQL server 2005. The highlight of course was the free software. All the 'new' features of SDQL server 2005 have pretty much been availble in Oracle since version 8. And the Visual studi presentation for which was the real reason I went was bascially SQL Server presentation part 2. total bust as far as any useful informartion was concerned. Although the last little(and rushed) demo on ASP 2.0 was interesting.

I spent the vis studio presentation giving voice to Tekchic's thoughts. The presenter would have trouble with his demo and say something like , 'pardon me this is the 4th one of these I have done in the past week and a half"... whereupon I would mumble in a not so quite tone , ' gee you'd think he would be better at it" Shari would then turn and go, "I was just thinking that!".. this happened several times and seemed to amuse her to no end :) So I suppose one could say entertaining someone else makes the ppresentation not a total loss hehehe.

Anyhoo end result presentation boring.. free development tools wonderful :)

Now to this weight loss challenge thing. I mentioned in my last post I had made a deal with my fiance aboutr working out regularly and taking measurements. And that I was going to do the same thing. I have run down my exact workout before but I will clarify here as some slight changes have occured since last time. I also took some of my own measurements of myself to record any changes. I will attempt to remember to record them here as well on a week by week basis so that those of you who read this can see if the challenge is working or not :)

So first.. the measurements I will be tracking.

Waist - two measurements..one my actual waist is 49 and two where I wear my pants :) 41
chest 47 inches
arms 13.5 inches. this is a measurement of the non flexed bicep. Interestingly enough just after workout I gain almost an inch and half hehe but that goes away :)
thighs 24 inches. Measured more or less mid thigh

Now the workout that i will be doing minimum of 6 days aweek.
First The Magnificent 7 from Matt Furey's Combat ABS.
5 to 10 reps of each stretch depending on the stretch. Some I can do more than others.
This gets me warmed up. Then on to the bowflex
All wieght lifting exercises are being down with 25 pounds of weight per side(using a bowflex). the list below is repetitions per set. I do two sets

bicep curls 20
seated row 20
seated flies 20
Lower Back Pull 15
Seated Lat pulls front 30
Seated Lat Pulls back(military press style) 30
Seated Pulldowns(a modifed curl bascially) 30
Standing tricep curls 25
Bechpress 20
Laying flies 20

this is followed by crunches
15 each of
upper
left and right oblique
lower
combination for a total of 75 crunches

Finally I finish up with 25 hidu squats and 5(currently) hindu pushups

Keep in mind this entire workout is done circuit style. Pausing only to change position or adjust the equipment on the bowflex(hooking up or unhooking the lat bar). Also I am still walking 1.5 -3 miles minimum 5 times a week. And trying to ride the bike 2 miles as well. Those right now are bonuses though. The challenge is to the do the workout

I have challenged myself to do this 6 if not 7 times a week for a month. Maybe two if the support group christmas party is not at the doctors office where I use the scale.

Do you feel up to the challenge? Join me... dedicate yourself to doing whatever workout you know you can do minimum 6 times a week for a month. Measure/weigh at the start and at the end. See if you see a difference.

Some days

2005-11-14T13:11:00.000-08:00

The reason I started this blog was to occasionally vent and discuss frustrations with the ongoing process of weight loss and gastric bypass. And thru open, honest revelation of what I am going thru to maybe shed some light on what others who are going thru the same process(or any weight loss process) are feeling. And if I am very lucky and blessed to help them thru thier difficulties. Now looking back thru the posts I haven't done a great deal of venting. Cause really overall I have not had a great many difficulties. As I have mentioned in the past most of my own difficulties are not related to the physical aspect of the surgery although those do play a role in my daily life. I go thru phases for example where food just does not want to remain where I put it. And when this happens it is pretty much all foods. Not just a couple isolated ones thatI can then take out of my diet.

the mental aspect of this though is where it gets rough. you have to remind yourself that it is okay to still want those foods which you know you should avoid. And that you must learn to discipline yourself to avoid them. For example I have a weakness for beef jerky and oreo cookies. Not together however :) So I have to be disciplined enough to not buy that package of oreos or the jerky.

But also I have to remind myself that if I do eat a few cookies then it is not the end of the world and I haven't sinned and fallen short of the glory....etc.. well okay maybe I have :) But it won't really hurt me. It is only when that develops into a habit that it becomes a problem. So far I have not had a real problem with this mind you. I have managed to be cognizant of these things when they come around. Althought admittedly the beef jerky connection to a weight loss stopage took a day or two to figure out.

My point is once again (like I have mentioned before and will probably mention again)... I am still the same person I was before the surgery. With the same desires for foods (mostly hehe) that I had before. It is only the physical that was changed by the surgery. The mental is up to me to alter. I must find the will power within myself to make the mental changes needed for continuing success and longer term weight loss.

This is not an easy thing. And it seems the longer I go the harder it actually gets and not easier. As my recovery proceeds to the point that foods that used to send my blood sugars thru the roof or cause 'dumping syndrome' no longer effect me in the same manner I have to make sure I constantly remind myself what brought here in the first place. That is was my lack of discipline in those areas that took me down the road that eventuallyled to the choice of surgery or death.

So what do I do to offset the mental battles that I constantly am waging these days? I make bets with myself. For instance I had let myself get out of the habit of working out 5 times a week. Granted this slip only went on for a couple weeks while I was fighting off a sinus infection but I had slipped out of the workout habit nonetheless. I let my sinus infection coupled with my resurgence of knee diffculties creep me out of my workout regime. Within only a couple weeks it had become a struggle to make myself find the time to workout. Our minds are insidious with thier own laziness. :) Given the choice we would much rather not workout.

Anyway back to my point(eventually). My fiance is also having trouble motivating to do her own workout. She is not happy with where she is physically and so wants to change. But the changes are coming much slower than she desires and it is hurting her motivation factor. As with us all. We live in a society of instant gratification. We want it all and we want it right now. hence the popularity of fad diets. the promise of instant weight loss is a very tempting carrot to dangle in front of us lazy rabbits.

Again I ramble :) I basically told my fiance this.. take a set of exercises..we will then take measuresments, wieght,BMI, fat percentage and pictures... then for one month decidicate to doing these exercises at minimum of 5 times a week. If you do this and we see NO changes. I will never say another word about working out again. And then I made myself the same deal only I am pushing for a minimum of 6 times per week. Now personally if I don't see any changes I won't stop working out. But honestly I expect to see changes. If not in weight then in size, fat percentage,etc.

If youa re wondering where the one month time frame comes from it is from a couple of things. A) one month is really the least amount of time we can do a workout routine and expect to see results. Anything less will often not produce anything as it takes our bodies that amount of time to adjust. and B) my support group meetings are once a month and that is when i use the doctors spiffy scale to take measurements I cannot take at home such a fat percentage, fat free mass, and such.

The point being that in order to get myself off dead center I make bets with myself. I say "Self, you are asking her to do this. Are YOU willing to do the same? Now...are you willing to take it a step further?"

This again serves more than one purpose to me. It gets me off dead center and it means I am not asking her to do something I am not willing to do myself. Plus I can then hopefully help motivate her by showing her I am motivated myself. Make sense? Silly? hehe probably but whatever works.

Continuing weight plateaus & various ventings

2005-11-09T07:57:00.000-08:00

So again this month I found I actually gained a little bit. sitting at 240 again. BUT the fat mass went down 3 pounds my fat free mass went up 6 pounds so that is good. So again you cannot look at just the scale number as the total indicator. Also I haven't yet taken pictures for this month but I suspect I have lost a bit more overall size which i will be able to confirm when i get new pictures and can place them side by side against the old ones. But it is still frustrating none the less :) And mentally these are the things you struggle with day after day with weight loss.

And no less than three times this past week I have heard someone or heard of someone saying that gastric bypass is the easy way out to weight loss. heh these are people that have obviously not gone thru it. nothing about this is easy. Nothing. It is much better and easier to loose little bits of weight at one time than it is to drop 100 plus pounds in what amounts to overnight. the mental issues alone tend to do bad things to you. Not to mention the physical changes that your body has to cope with.

this amount of weight loss is a massive shock to the system. Things quit working - as evidenced by the shutting down of my gall bladder . other things that didn't hurt start hurting just as much as the things that did hurt stop hurting. :)

people that treat me different from a year go still tick me off. Apparently loosing 165 pounds has made me smarter and more socially acceptable. Well unfortunatly I know it has made me more socially acceptable. I am no longer an embarassment to be with apparently. Now don't misunderstand me. this is NOT everyone I am talking about. i have had and still have some good friends who never once treated me like I was some social outcast due to weight. What i am talking about our the people who now see me in an entirely different and acceptable light because I fit in a resturant booth. those folks that suddenly want to be chatty who would not give me the time of day a year ago. This sort of thing is what irritates me. Of course it is a good thing that airlines can't make me buy two seats now haha

But it certainly does let you know who your friends really are. And it is interesting how weight loss changes relationships though. On both sides of the coin. non heavy people treat you differently but then so do heavier folks. Friends you had who you used to go out with to eat are suddenly uncomfortable. there is a lady in our support group who is on her 4th support person now. Mainly because the people who support her are also heavy and as she continues to loose weight they grow resentful.

I have gone out of my way as well to not turn into one of the weight loss fanatics to my friends who are heavier. A) I know full well that it is not as easy as getting up one day and saying 'today I loose wieght' b) before my surgery I encountered no less than three individuals who had undergone a gastric bypass that took it upon themselves to stop me - a complete stranger - in the mall or whatever store I was in at the time and proceed to preach to me the wonders of the gastric bypass. Talk about something that made me want to hit someone. that was just so completely irritating and humiliating. Just makes you want to break something. if someone asks me I have no problem telling them what I did and what I have gone thru but I don't stop complete strangers and tell them ' man you are fat, you should have surgery'.

Anyway I have rambled on long enough for one day.

peace!

Plateaus

2005-10-28T10:55:00.000-07:00

Weight loss plateaus stink. I have been on one for awhile now and maybe just maybe have finally come off of it. We'll see what the scale says at the docs office in a couple weeks. it gets very frustrating when you are so close to your goal(another 35 pounds to go) (personal goal mind you not what the doctor tells me ) and everything seems to stop. Weight wise I mean. I am still dropping size so I know I am not really doing anything wrong. But still it is a tough mental game to have to play.

However what the plateau can do if you let it is remind you that the number on the scale is not the only factor you need to look at. Fat Percentage, inches in areas such as the waist(and others), and others numbers including but somewhat less so the BMI.

the problem with the Body Mass Index is it is not a very good indicator of health. For example a body builder at 250 and an overwieght person at 250 can have the same BMI but are in two very different places health wise. So take BMI with a grain of salt and make sure it is not the only number you look at.

Anyway I have rambled on enough. Just felt the need to vent a few thoughts on weight loss and the stagnation there of. Which is after all why I started this blog in the first place.

Peace!

New pics and New Toy

2005-10-22T00:25:00.000-07:00

So was kicking around at lunch today and drifted into one of the pawn shops I frequent every so often and found this http://esupport.sony.com/perl/model-documents.pl?mdl=PEGNX70V You can get to the specifications list from that page. I had fallen in love with this way back but at the time was looking for a CE device and not another Palm device. I had one of the first color CLie though and loved the thing. So I picked it up and dug out all my old palm software hehe.

And I said in my title I had pictures... here we go

http://www.shadoespace.net/surgery/montage_front.jpg http://www.shadoespace.net/surgery/montage_side.jpg

The two latest complete start to finish pic sets from my weight loss. Down 170 pounds and hoping to loose another 30 before it is all over. I am once again on a plateau in my weight loss but I continue to loose size. In other words my pants keep fitting looser and looser hehe. Shirts are pretty stable as my shoulders ain't getting any smaller. To do that bones would have to break and I think this is something to be avoided :)

And the last one goes away

2005-10-13T23:13:00.000-07:00

This week. Or rather late last week I went to my Primary Care Physician for some pain related issues. While I was there he went ahead and decided to do a full blood workup. The upshot of that is based on the results of those test I was able to stop taking my last perscription medication. My kidneys and blood pressure have returned to normal. The Altace was the last thing I was stil taking and now that too is gone. So the entire list of medications I used to take... the glucophage, flonase,altace,nasonex, and the other one I cannot recall the name of.. has gone away after loosing 170 pounts. 32.5 more pounds and I will be literally half the man I started as. Trying to get there by the first of the year but don't think I will make it. :) Oh well will just have to keep pushing after that.

And I must say looking at my bathroom window in the morning and seeing only vitamins and natural supplements sitting there instead of the litany of drugs is a nice sight.

Haha Another New Music Instrument

2005-10-03T18:34:00.000-07:00

Yes that is right I have done it again. Last Friday I was going to play bass with the worship team of the Baptist Singles Church website can be found here http://www.baptistsingleschurch.com

Anyway my bass amp had to go in the shop because I had a gain pot go bad on me. And I was not sure I would get it back in time. So I decided I would go out and shop for a small bass amp that would get me by. Then my friend Tekchic(blog link in the link section to the right) said she had a small one I could borrow. No sooner did she show up with her amp than the repair shop called me letting me know mine was ready.

So anyway I ended up at Music Go Round and found this http://www.ibanez.com/guitars/guitar.asp?model=SR300DX for quite a bit less than suggested retail. I plugged in and played it but decided not to get it. I went on and played with my old fender Friday. But kept thinking about the ibanez. It is lighter than my fender by about half and the neck is smaller and fits my short fingers better.

bottom line is I went back on Saturday before heading to Bartlesville to check out the church I will be leading the music at during a revival in a couple weeks(hehe another story entirely) and purchased it. Got to plug it in tonight finally and shake the walls a bit. Quite nice. Has a fatter sound than my fender due to the extra pickup and the neck is quite smooth and fast.

I like it hehe. Can't wait to see how it records and plays in a live situation.

More new toys - Musical in Nature

2005-09-22T10:51:00.000-07:00

I picked up a Digitech BP80 Bass effects processor. Has all the bells and whistles including cabinet and amp modeling, expression pedal. Mainly I got it so I can choose to run ampless if I want to as it functions a preamp, and it will let me fatten up the sound a bit to my liking :) I seem to have found myself once again thrust into the roll of a bass player with my current musical oppurtunities. Perhaps I should just embrace that and go with? Ya think?

Rockstar and New Toys

2005-09-21T06:06:00.000-07:00

So I finally picked up a new mp3 player. The Olympus M:ROBE 100. 5 gig player for 130 bucks retails. And do far it has done pretty well. Battery life seems decent and I only have gotten the thing about half full and half close to 400 songs on it. You can make playlists and such. All the typical features.

Anyone else watch the Rockstar:INXS finale last night? Guess now we see if INXS can reinvent themselves as a band and become relevant to the current mainstream crowd. I think if I was marty though at this point I would take Dave Navarro up on his offer, call up the house band for the show and go rock the world hehe.

Oh Music, Salt and other ramblings

2005-09-14T17:25:00.000-07:00

This week I experienced my first minor set back on my weight loss road. I gained 6 pounds. Now granted I am still 167 pounds lighter than when I started and 7 pounds light than last month. Also my BMI went down and I lost another inch of my waist. So all in all I cannot be to disappointed. Plus I think I have figured out why. Water Retention due to the high sodium content in my diet.

When I have problems keeping food down I always fall back to what works. And beef jerky works. So I have been eating a lot of it lately. One package is about 3.5 ounces of jerky and 1290 mg of sodium. given that I was doing two or three bags a day this could easily explain any weight gain. So with much regret the jerky has to go away for awhile. I have to limit myself to one or two bags a week. And that is only after I get back down to where I was before the weight gain. hehe discipline and reward so to speak.

Now the title of this post mentions music soooo.. Lets talk about that shall we. I have long held the theory that muscians of any genre should be open to other forms of music. Myself I listen to a little bit of everything, from rock to country, to opera, to hip hop.. you name it and I bet I have at least one song in my mp3 library of that style.

Which brings me to the point... CMT's CrossRoads... I have been hearing about this show for awhile now but I finally managed to watch an episode and needless to say it has a permanent spot on the ol' DVR now.

For those of you unfamiliar with the show what happens is one Country Star gets paired with a Rock star and they bascially sing each others music.

The most recent one I have seen was Pat Benetar and Martina Mcbride. Two HUGE voices in thier respective genere.. by huge I mean thier actual sound.. these ladies have BIG powerful voices.

Interesting hearing Pat sing Independence Day and Mcbride singing Hit Me With Your Best Shot and Heartbreaker.

Anyway check the show out if you don't watch it already this week is Bon Jovi and Sugarland which should be a good show.

Just When you thought it was safe to go back to food..

2005-09-07T19:15:00.000-07:00

Sunday at lunch I was discussing my current food situation with a friend of mine. She had asked if I was still having difficulty keeping anything down. I responded that no I had not had any problems for over a couple weeks now. HA! Pride goeth before the fall. Seems I spoke to soon cause since that same evening I cannot keep anything substantial down. By substantial I mean like hambuger, chicken.. meat products bascially. I have had to back off to softer foods again for a bit. It is quite frustrating and I have to constantly remind myself I am not yet a year out and that this is perfectly normal and to be expected. Along with those difficulties though for the past couple weeks I have had something new crop up. When I get hungry... it hurts.. a lot. I get almost cramp like sensations when I get hungry. Sucks. Not sure if that means I am not eating enough or what. Hoepfully I can solve it fairly quickly though cause it has already gotten old :)

Oh and I was thinking about putting together a webpage that chronicled my Surgery and progress. Think that would be interesting? I was thinking among other things I can pull the relevant blog entries for the page as well to capture them all in one place. Let me know what you think.

Word verification

2005-09-07T06:11:00.000-07:00

Like many others of late I too have turned on the Word verification process for comments. No big deal just type in the word you see at the bottom of the comments form. Gotta cut the spammers out :)

More weight loss goodness

2005-08-29T09:01:00.000-07:00

Been a couple days since I posted and been a bit
since we discussed weight loss issues. Had an interesting
experience this weekend. Well I guess interesting
moment would be more appropriate.

First a little background. In 1990 when I moved back
to Oklahoma from North Carolina I of course had to
replace my driver's liscense. On that liscense was
the weight figure 240 pounds. hehe This figure has
stayed on thier each time I renewed. Just never seemed
to get altered to reflect my current weight.

So anyhoo this Sunday I got on the scale as I
always do and had to do a bit of a double take....
Figure on the scale?..... 236. Yes yes I now weigh
LESS than what I weighed 15! years ago. hehe was
quite the nice suprise.

I have actually already surpassed my personal
goals in weight loss from the surgery. That goal
was 250 pounds. I have now set a new goal and I
have altered my workouts to try and keep the
weight travelling down a bit. My goal is now to
weight 200 pounds by Jan 6 of 2006. That will be
exactly one year from my surgery. If I make that
goal I will have lost 205 pounds from the start
weight of 405. And I can say that I am literally
half the man I was hehehe

Here is the workout I do.

Morning - 4 of the magnificent 7 from Matt Furey's Combat Abs
walk 1.25 miles

After noon - walk 1.25 miles

Evening - Bowflew two sets of 15 bicep curls
seated rows, seated flies, back pulls, bench press, laying flies.
75 crunches 15 each upper/lower/right left obliques
the remaining 3 of the magnificent 7
recumbant bike 2.5 miles.

This week I plan to add to this the Royal Court three from
Mr Furey's COmbat Fitness book. Hindu pushups, hindu squats, and a back bridge or
wall walk if I can't do the bridge.

I do that 5 days a week. Taking two days off to let me body relax.

And now for your viewing ... um... enjoyment? A montagetype picture from 5 days post op up to last week. At total weight loss of 169 pounds at this point from 405 down to 236 and falling.

CLICK_HERE

Musical Journies

2005-08-23T19:28:00.000-07:00

New Harddrive is performing...okay... some things don't seem to be quite right in the system just yet hehe.

So lately I have been going on abit of a musical journey. Have played everything from Jonny Cash, to Garth, all the way up thru Black Sabbath. Today I picked up two new slides one glass and one brass. hehe. So now endeavoring to learn some slide guitar. Even broke out my older acoustic/electric because the action is higher and better for slide. Need to go out though and get a dedicated guitar for slide so I can retune it down to open G tuning.

Also finally found the fingerpicks I had been looking for. I cannot keep my fingernails any real length. They get very VERY annoying to me so I keep them trimmed. Consequently my fingerstyle guitar technique uses my fingertips and not the nail. A couple months ago I started picking up Acoustic Guitar magazine and kept seeing these ads for a set of nifty looking picks for the finger picks. These are metal picks. Basically the picks wrap right around the end of the finger and take the place of a small fingernail. They allow me to put my hand in the fingerpicking position I am used to. Or at least something very close to it so now it is just a matte of getting a thumb pick I like and getting used to them hehe.

Ugh Harddrive go boom

2005-08-20T19:36:00.000-07:00

hehe went to boot up my computer last night and got... disk read error... nothing I could do would bypass it. Drive was dead. So I spent the better part of the day rebuilding my system. When I got it up and running I tossed the old drive into my external enclosure to see if I could at least get some data off of it. Nope... kept telling me drive was not formatted hehe. It was dead dead dead. Oh well luckily I had within the last month made a back up of emails and such so I didn;t loose much.

Now you're playing with power

2005-08-15T13:58:00.000-07:00

Along with all the new guitars I have I decided I needed something to play them thru :) So I went pawnshop hoping some time back with a friend of mine. In one particular shop we found two likely amplfier prospects. One Fender Bandit 112 and a CRate TD-50c. Brian's wife bought him the fender not to long after that for his birthday. So today I went in and plugged in the Crate and made sure all the knobs and buttons worked then talked the pawnshop into eating the tax bascially getting abit more of a break in the price and brought it home to really see what is sounds like. Haven't played my acoustic thru it yet but the Yamaha sounds oh so lovely. From a nice ultra clean sound either thru just the amp channel B or thru the effects pedal to all the myriad of distortions sounds I get thru my pedals. haha I imagine my neighbors now are one.. slightly irritated with me for shaking thier windows.. and two.. not quite sure what to make of a bedroom that has every thing from thrash metal rythym riffs to rockabilly to straight country coming out of it all in the space of just a few minutes. hahaha

new tech toy

2005-08-08T22:20:00.000-07:00

Picked up an external enclosure for an internal harddrive today. Basically this is a box containing an IDE drive hook up for an internal drive. Which then connects to your computer thru firewire or USB2. instand extra space without the need for a new controller card. Little slower than straight internal but good for holding scads of mp3s and such. Will probably pick up a second enclosure and drive to use as a storage spot for my own original music and my video editing work files.