Tool

In 2000, I hooked up with 3 co-workers to form Corporate Prisoner. We had Jon, who has a Master's in Music, playing guitar. Ralph, who has a Master's in Music, played bass. Steve, who didn't have have a Master's in Music, played guitar. I, who doesn't have a Master's in Music, played drums. The most serious ass-kicking I've ever received is when we tried to play a Tool song called "46+2."

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I like watching this video. I don't really like the song.

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College Friends

I've written before about the college friend get-together. This is us a week ago. From left to right: Karen B, Jeff B, Brad (in the back) Denise, Me (in the back), Karen (my wife) in front, Mark, LuAnn, Nancy, Kevin. We were in Cedar Falls to see Karen's brother's band play at the Hub.

Walk Like an Eagle

Alex and I are left today @ 7:15 to go to the Coral Ridge Mall. We walked for the MDA walk. We are going to 5:15 Mass. I know that Jim (guitar) and Keith (bass) will be there so I plan to play drums. Megan is singing @ 11 AM Mass on Sunday and (I hope) to play drums for the youth group as well.

Yesterday, I had a great day at work. I have a User Guide due on Monday and I feel like I'm 99.9% done. I'll spellcheck one more time and call it good. It needs to be reviewed. It is the first manual that I am writing 100% new. All other docs have been updates to existing documentation.

I am starting to ramp up the cassette to MP3 conversion. I have 1000 cassettes (if you count a single 90 minute tape with, say a Scorpions release on one side and a Missing Persons release on the other) so the project is probably not going to be completed in 2012. Maybe by 2014. That's a guess.

Anyways, I have made a lot of what can generally be described as compilations. Within that master group, there are slave groups. Here's a list of the slave groups I have:

1. College Tapes - 18-ish 90 minute tapes of answering machine messages from college. I am converting the first tape in the series now. I was wild my freshman year. I drank a lot - freely admitted. As I'm listening to some of those episodes now... lots of things I will never publicly reveal. Let's just say that I have no plans to run for president b/c if some of this stuff came out, I'd be smeared pretty heavily. At the same time, this first volume has an outstanding Buddy Rich tune. I don't know the name of it. That's followed by a slurred speaking person into the answering machine to check for messages. Other volumes, in the future, will capture the trials and tribulations of living through college. Now there's a slow song ballad with a female vocalist singing "Make it real." Now, Guns-n-Roses' "Patience" is playing.
2. Mixture Posture - 10-ish 90 minute tapes of songs that I wanted to have on a single cassette.
3. Heavy Metal Managery - 22-ish 90 minute tapes of heavy metal. When I obtained a new cassette of a band, I would include at least one song from it.
4. Ballads - 22-ish 90 minute tapes of slow songs, like Chicago and Air Supply as well as heavy metal ballads like Def Leppard's "Love Bites."
5. Jam Tapes - 20-ish 90 minute tapes of various jam sessions from my parent's basement. Predominantly, it is James playing guitar, Ken playing guitar, and me playing drums. Various others make cameo appearances.
6. Drums - 10-ish 90 minute tapes of me playing drums in my parent's basement. There are probably gems of my playing in there, but I honestly haven't listened to them.

In addition of all those Master Groups, I have a slew of other cassettes. A lot of demos from writing freelance music reviews since 1992. A lot of tapes I traded through the mail. A lot of store-bought tapes. There are other slave groups not mentioned.

I am working through CDs at the same time. I never really took the time to organize all my As, Bs, etc together so that I could say "I'm done with all the A's" but what has happened is that there is a mix. I just ripped Fugazi's "13 Songs" and upcoming are some Forbidden releases (a thrash band). I have ~27 spindles to work my way through, though not all of them are full. I split my CD-Rs by letter. I know there are at least 2 spindles of Ms and each spindle is 100 CD-Rs.

It's 11:15 AM. Only a few more hours until 5:15 Mass.

The Next Generation

Here's an off-hand comment about businesses. A business is not a living thing, like a person, despite what Mitt Romney thinks. A business makes decisions that are best for it. If there are parts of your lawn mower that don't work, then you get it fixed. Consider that, sometimes, documentation (what I write every day) is the black tape that holds the cables together. Software companies that do not have a tech writer are missing the black tape. The lawn mower works, it does what it needs to do to give the lawn mower a paycheck. But the cables can trip you up, if you're not careful.

But that's not where I am now.

When I go to work tomorrow, I will continue the work I have done for the last 9 months. I spend a lot of my time anticipating the future. It's pretty much what any TWer does. You have to put yourself in the chair of your user and anticipate what they are going to ask. "I have a new system, I have a user ID and password, I've logged in. What do I do first?" Or "My boss told me to set up users in the system. Where do I do that?"

And I love that type of work. I love putting myself in that role. I am a user advocate. I learn what I can and communicate that.

So yes, my job is going very well. I have carved a niche. I am the Word guru. I am the HTML guru. I have a lot of ideas about how to make the documentation better.

My philosophy has adapted since being here. I have a sincere disdain for documentation that regurgitates the UI in the help text. It's a waste of time. There's a column in the UI called "Warning" and if you click a small arrow in the column, you see a list of valid values. Someon said, put those values in the help. Why? It's there in the UI. If the user looks in that column and then reads the help... .they'll think I'm an idiot.

And I'm also falling more in love with Word as I work on it daily. Templates, styles... I love 'em.

I also am using Dreamweaver to code HTML. I recently rediscovered a javascript I used to create a TOC based upon heading styles and, while I haven't implemented it yet because a TOC with only two entries that you can see when you look at the page doesn't seem worth it, I went into it and monkeyed around with it. A friend of mine pointed out why it wasn't looking the way I wanted it to and it had to do with CSS definitions that were in a CSS file I used to use and that had been taken out of the one I was currently using. Just exploring that situation made me salivate.

So here's the best part. There was a meeting today. A senior level person was talking about all the upcoming projects and started listing them in the PowerPoint presentation we were watching. Guess who is assigned to the doc for most of those projects? Me. And I've been there just over 9 months.

When I look at where I was a year ago and compare that to where I am now... I'm a different person. My self-confidence took a hit and it affected me. Seriously. I believe that every thing happens for a reason though. The other day, I was looking at some text that looked like this:

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
   blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

and I noticed the second line was not aligned. That is the same type of error that might have missed my eye during my dip in self-confidence. I was trying so hard to catch things that simple SIMPLE things went by me. But not anymore. I see line 2. I see multiple line 2s when I edit a co-worker's work or when I look at anything. I see it!

I am completely energized. I have not dreaded a single day of the last 9 months as it relates to going into work. I have lots to do - as has been my history at my employers - and I love it. The last 9 months have been exciting and there is so much more to look forward to in the near future. On 3/10, I leave for Memphis, TN, to go to WritersUA. What's kind of funny is that I didn't really have to justify or make a case for going. I made a suggestion to go and the next thing I know, I'm making hotel and van reservations. I'll be sure to post a recap when I get back.

In conclusion, my life is fantastic. I enjoy my life.

Two Months Later...

Motley Crue's Shout at the Devil has always been one of my favorite releases. Today, a review I wrote of it was posted on Dailyvault.com.

Who Shot First?

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-chat-bounces+twer_lists_all=hotmail.com@lists.techwr-l.com [mailto:techwr-l-chat-
bounces+twer_lists_all=hotmail.com@lists.techwr-l.com] On Behalf Of Gabrielle V
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2012 1:08 PM
To: TECHWR-L Community Chat (Off-topic)
Subject: Re: [TECHWR-L-Chat] Who Shot First?

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 5:59 AM, Paul Hanson wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 4:58 PM, Gabrielle V wrote:
>>
>>I've been having this long-running discussion with a co-worker all
>>day, and I thought I'd post it here to get you guysez feedback. It's
>>a great "micro-macro" question (seems to be a minor thing, but is
>>indicative of bigger things.)
>>
>>In Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, during the Mos Eisley Cantina
>>scene, Han Solo and bounty hunter Greedo have a controversial blaster
>>face-off at one of the tables.
>>
>>Did Han shoot first?
>>
>>Han fired the only shot and killed Greedo.

Actually, both Greedo and Solo fired shots in the original. I have
the original Star Wars Trilogy on laserdisc, and it shows that Solo
*did* fire first...BEFORE Lucas re-edited the scene.

So, now that you know this, did Han shoot first? Even though in the
current version of Star Wars, he didn't?

Which version of the film is "true"?

>>Bonus: What did Han say to the bartender as he flipped him a coin as he
>>walked out?

"Sorry about the mess."

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Greedo's shot hits the wall before Han's shot hits Greedo. I'll go with Han.

Great Weekend = Little Progress

Slight jump from last week, but it was a busy week. This upcoming week is equaly busy. Big deadline a week from today and I will be pushing hard to hit it. Total Files Listed: 35344 File(s) 194,427,254,210 bytes

Discipline or Crazy

Update

This is my weekly update.

     Total Files Listed:
           34000 File(s) 188,716,745,064 bytes

That number may actually go down a little b/c I have been experimenting with the Cassette2USB converter and have duplicate versions of the same cassette.

Goodbye Whitney

At 48 years young, Whitney Houston is dead.

Know what I remember about her? I remember my girlfriend in high school liked her music. I thought she had a decent voice, but I didn't go out of my way to listen to her.

Humbled

From a list I'm on, someone wrote:

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80s artists that never got their due:

1. Oingo Boingo
2. Wall of Voodoo
3. Colourbox
4. The Armoury Show
5. Strawberry Switchblade
6. Neon Judgement
7. Fad Gadget
8. Wolfgang Press
9. Didjits
10. Scratch Acid
11. Rational Youth

90s artists who were ignored because they weren't 'grunge':

1. The Gits
2. New Duncan Imperials
3. Hammerbox
4. Giant Sand
5. Sister Double Happiness
6. Masters of Reality
7. Lard
8. Buffalo Tom
9. Forbidden Dimension
10. Killdozer
11. Attrition (goth)

Newer Indie/obscure stuff I've discovered (or produced ;')):

1. Maximo Park
2. Witch (stoner rock by Dinsaur Jr. members)
3. Mendozza (Vancouver Doom kings)
4. Sunn (o)))) (doooooom)
5. Betty Kracker (pop/punk rawk)
6. Camera Obscura (60s Britpop)
7. Pipettes (same)
8. Dan Mangan (indie pop)
9. She Wants Revenge (postpunk)
10. Bettie Serveert (Dutch pop)
11. Triggerfinger (Belgian rock)
12. SOLDOUT! (Belgian electro)
13. Dana Fuchs (Dutch blues/soul)
14. Burial (ambient dub)

Vancouver bands (props to my EastVan friends!):

1. Motorama (mathcore)
2. Hawaiian Bibles (if Japandroids hadn't blown up everyone would be talking about these guys instead)
3. Gnash Rambler (punk)
4. The Hathaways (garagepunk)
5. Cadaver Dogs (roots punk a la Supersuckers)
6. Little Guitar Army (9-12 piece punk spectacle)
7. Piggy (punk feat. former members of Black Flag)
8. Rumsfeld (drone/sludge a la Killdozer)
9. The Rain and the Sidewalk (darkwave/goth)
10. Collapsing Opposites (indie loopers)
11. Role Mach (jazzpunk)
12. The Jolts (punk rawk - Classic Rock(UK) gave their CD 8/10)
13. Big John Bates (psychobilly Vegas burlesque show)

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And I thought I had a lot of bands that no one had ever heard of. To be far, Master of Reality and New Duncan Imperials are at least familiar names to me, though I can't tell you why.

Recap

On 2/1/12, my co-worker committed suicide. I cannot fully wrap my head around the fact that she is not going to be at work anymore. I feel like it is surreal. It feels like there are a lot of pieces missing to the puzzle. What does a suicidal person think about as they are dying? Metallica got a lot of flack for their song "Fade to Black" and a lot of people assumed it was about suicide. It is actually about the feeling of despair after some gear was stolen. When I heard the following song on Rock 108, I thought it was about suicide.

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Status

This is my weekly update.

     Total Files Listed:
           33000 File(s) 184,830,964,576 bytes

If you've been paying attention, that means I've ripped 11814 MP3s in 36 days. Of those, 109 files/7.5 hours are from cassettes. I plan to track that number as well.

The other thing(s) going on in life are not as inspiring. My co-worker Penny Cazanas is no longer with us. I worked with her from 5/31/2011 to 2/2/2012. May she rest in peace.