You see last Sunday after going to the Boat and Ski Club to watch and listen to "The Game". A monthly song writing contest where she puts a bunch of potential song titles on her web site and the Music community votes on their 3 most favorite they think they can write a song to. Then once it is determined which 3 then the community has a certain amount of time to write a song involving one or all three of those titles. Then they present them at "The Game". No body really wins anything. Its kind of an incentive to get people to write and keep fresh! The real winners are we the fans who get to hear something the first time it is played before it gets put in the artists repertoire.
So anyway afterwards after talking with friends in the Boat & Ski Bar. Doktor Dave invites me to come see him play with Hot Rod up in Carmel Mountain at the Hot Java Cafe. It turned out to be a great night for me because I got to hear Dave play a different kind of music, backing up people when he hasn't necessarily played the song before. But Dave is such a great player he picks things up so quickly that it might not be that big of a challenge. He's that good! But I digress. It was great because I got to hear a lot of other performers I haven't heard before like Hot Rod and also one of my favorite people Chelsea Flor. Also got to see another favorite female friend Brooklyn. I have never seen either of these young ladies perform before and although they ended up being the last two in the lottery (how open mike sets get picked for their slots) they were fantastic. Very different vocally and musically but they still wow'ed me! There was one guy who kinda of weirded me out though he kinda acted and sang like Bob Dylan. Problem was he didn't sound like him, and he may need a few guitar lessons and he definitely didn't rock anyones world that night. Perhaps he just needs to find himself first before being like someone else and then a little more seasoning. Another really good performer was a guy named "Tim" (last name to be supplied later >grin<) he had a nice style and really knew how to play his guitar. So after listening to another great night of music and the great new music this afternoon. Dave wanted to go to Lestat's to check out Kyle Phalan do some solo acoustic work.
But what really happened was as usual Dave Chelsea and me (and usually there are two or three others) sat in the parking lot until late talking about this and that. One of the subjects that came up pertains to what happened to me for the last couple of days and the reason Murphy stepped in and why I started this blog this evening. We got on the subject of computers, which comes up a lot in our conversations Chelsea who uses computer all the time was saying how she didn't understand a couple of thing about the computer and mostly programming and me and Dave were happily trying to explain it!
Dave on top of his many talents is the webmaster @ Musicjammers.com and has been dong stuff with the computer since its early days with the TRS80 and Vic 20. I went along the same lines and was doing the same stuff and did a stint as a helpdesk person for Dell's infamous Computer Tech helpline. I have been a general know it all on computers for years. (I was a career student!) I have been the system admin for a few companies and webmaster for a few more since that was my primary line of work before I ...uh...retired. So I was taking about this with them when I said how I had this firewall and that firewall and had never been hacked and that my computer that I built about 4 or 5 years ago is still competing with new computers made today. I did a lot of research and had built quite a few computers in my time but I took pride in this one because I had really put together a tight computer for once.
So anyway we went home that night and the very next day Murphy stepped in and my computer went on the fritz (my apologies to Billy). It looked like my system had been hacked and one of my pieces of hardware (a new USB wireless adapter I put on six months ago) was going out of whack and continually rebooting my computer and also corrupting windows and files as it was going. It wasn't just a minor fix it was a fire (not an actual fire thank god). I spent a day and a half just trying to keep it stable enough to back up my hard drive. Something I should have done lately but have been too busy or too lazy to do. It almost cost me my music database and a few other un-replacable things. But I was able to save everything except two files that were over 7 gigs each and I couldn't keep it stable long enough to cut them up so I could save 'em but I can make them again. It will just be time consuming and a pain!
So I am a firm believer that everyone needs to rebuild their hard drive (erase everything and delete partitions debug and cut everything down to the machine language core) every couple of years. Just to get rid of the bloat and flotsam and jetsam that computers can get over the years. And start off with a clean install. And boy my computer is happy and whizzing along at incredible speeds again. Sot the moral of this little story is don't let Murphy catch you bragging about your computer prowess or you just might have to prove you have the skills to save your computer. As a retired person I would be very hard put in getting a new computer and if that happened I would be very unhappy. How would I find out where all the good music is happening at? Its hell to get cut off and feel blind and dumb! Well I'm out!
Ciao
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