Seattle Underground

My cousin from California has been visiting over the weekend. Joanne and I picked him up at the airport Saturday afternoon and I'll be taking him back to the airport tomorrow afternoon.

Sunday we went to Seattle on the Bremerton Ferry (The Walla Walla). The Underground tour was very cool and informative. We were lucky that is was very clear and dry all day. It was cold, especially for a guy from Cal but not too cold. Yesterday we went to Northwest Trek and hung out there most of the day.

It was a fun weekend and we even had some snow today. There could be more snow tomorrow, we'll have to wait and see.

One last thought, "Do you think the Governor of Wisconsin is thinking, 'Let them eat cheese cake'"?

 A picture from the Walla Walla

Take a minute to visit The Goal Farm too!

Mondo Manda, not a bad idea!

Mike, you're right about cramming you fingers into them tiny little frets. I does remind me of switching back to guitar after years of banging on the bass. The guitar seemed pretty cramped like the mandolin does at this point.

The KTone finally came in the mail last night. It got stuck in bad weather coming from the East coast. I got it unpacked and gave it a once over. The workmanship and quality is pretty good for the price. The next step was to tune it and try out a few of the chords I learned.

This ended up with a 6 string Mandolin as both E strings broke when I tried to bring them up to tune. Fast forward to tonight... it is tuned up and has 8 strings again now. They are staying in tune a little longer each time I go over them again, they should settle down in a day or two. The D'Addario seems to tune and stay in tune pretty good, I might switch out the other six when I have more time.

Mandolin players spend half their time tuning their mandolin. They spend the other half of their time playing out of tune :)

Take a minute to visit The Goal Farm too!

No Labels - We the Purple - Facebook

It's a big toss up between adding this post and following advice from B.B. King who suggests, "When you don't have anything to say, shut up.".

That is really about all I have for tonight. I went to check out the No Labels and have been reading "We the Purple" which is a book similar to the idea behind "No Labels". And Facebook, well that might have to wait until another evening. Maybe tomorrow after practice is I don't get home too late.

Take a minute to visit The Goal Farm too!

Superbowl Sunday!

Go Steelers, Go Packers! Go points!

Joanne has 9 for the Packers and 3 for the Steelers. My numbers are 0 for Packers and 1 for Steelers. My side bet is that Joanne has better odds at making her numbers!

Isn't it great that there are folks that add fun to our lives?

The score card is strictly for fun, the house doesn't make a dime because all the money in gets paid out. A friend of mine asked if I wanted to get in on the board. I hadn't done that in a very long time so I figured I'd get a square for me and a square for Joanne.

If it were up to me, there wouldn't be a board available, because I never think of doing them. These fun loving folks in our lives remember to do things like this, take the time to collect the money, pull the numbers, pass the numbers out, then pass the money out after the game.

This makes watching the game fun. Years back I was just a few minutes from winning the 4th quarter final score. Joanne and I were on a bowling league so we had to listen to the very end of the game on the way to the alley. It was hard to drive an listen to a last minute interception returned for a touch down with less than a minute to go. That was the closest I came to winning on a quarter, it was the year the Bucs went to the big show. Don't remember the year exactly.

These friends that do these score cards are the same friends that throw parties or organize gatherings. The are good friends to have because the selflessly strive to make life fun for those around them.

OK, this is my excuse for ducking out of church early of it starts to go long! This afternoon is one of the annual gatherings with one of my friends that goes all out to throw a party for his friends. We can't let him down and miss kick-off. The last time is missed the opening kick was the 2006 Superbowl (I was taking the motorcycle safety riding class that weekend).

Enjoy the game and I hope the commercials live up to the expectations this year!
Take a minute to visit The Goal Farm too!

Guitarolin - I don't do waiting very well.

You got to like the information age. It is so, well, informational. Thanks to tracking software I can follow the mandolin from New York to Washington. It is currently in IL (experiencing bad weather, is the comment).

Thanks for the info Mike, it got me seeing thinks upside down or is it backwards?

Not being one know for patience... I wanted to get a jump on playing the mandolin. The goal was to learn a few chords and even read a few familiar songs to get a head start. So, to get started I decided to turn the old six string into a four string guitar/mandolin.

Here's how I went about it yesterday:

• Remove the low and high E strings (the outer two strings)
• Tune the A down to a G and leave the D alone
• Tune the B up to an E

This worked out pretty easy to reverse too since I'll need my acoustic for church tomorrow! This was a fun way to get some time in on mandolin tuning but the distance between the frets on the guitar is much more of a stretch than the mandolin. I don't think I'll put it back to a guitarolin after church tomorrow. It was a fun but I can wait a little bit longer and stick with strumming my six string.

There were other thoughts I had wanted to add to this post but once again I have forgotten them. One of these days I will learn to write things down. It's hard to since most of the thoughts come to me in the shower but I could keep a pad handy.

I just remembered that I was going to mention my current "web development" project at work. It involves being able to take credit card payments from our customers online. This is a first for the Health Care Authority. I don't agree with the design and the fee but the coding itself has been fun. Part of the project is building in a bunch of automation for the accounting staff/system. It feels good to be productive with this project when I've had to re-teach myself a lot of the syntax and environment.

I'd call myself a good web developer at this point, not great, or an expert, but I can figure out how to get things done. It's like learning the mandolin, my goal is to be a good mandolin player. Not great, not the best, good enough to make good sounding music.

It's funny how we will strive to be the best or great at something. The passion should be with the activity, not the status of your ability. This is something I was I had learned to focus on much earlier (yes, when I was younger). Life is better when you just do something because you are passionate about it rather then being recognized for being "great" at it.

Take a minute to visit The Goal Farm too!

Finding dream web development job - Step II

This seems like such a logical next step that I'm surprised that I didn't think of it sooner. I decided it was time to stop the bouncing around between PHP, ASP, and ASP.net. My head can only hold so much, Javascript, VBScript, XML, HTML, ADO, SQL, etc..

The best step I can take is to focus on what I enjoy learning the most, that is the next big step, bigger and more productive than endless false leads on web searches.

So, I took the "Big Next Step" yesterday. I ordered a mandolin off of e-Bay. Now I can focus on learning the reverse of EADG since the tuning I'll use on the mandolin s GDAE.

I wonder if that will help me play the guitar upside easier?

Biking season is almost ready to start. Actually, a lot of riders have already started. I'm holding off on hitting the open road until March 1st (the cold weather does not play well with all the surgical steel in my body). Feb 28th I'll go for a shave and a haircut. I quit shaving Nov 1st and haven't had a haircut either, good thing is was pretty short from the last cut.

I'll keep hacking on the mainframe, making music, and riding for miles until something in the way of web development comes along. This might spark new interest in updating "The Goal Farm" and my other web site.

Take a minute to visit The Goal Farm too!