Wish I lived in San Francisco...

If I lived in San Francisco, I would definitely go to Giants baseball games when Metallica is playing, as James Hetfield describes in this video:

Racism in America

I feel the need to clarify that if you look at this post's label, it is "Republican Tendencies" and it is labeled as such not because I think race issues are political - rather, Erick Erickson is a conservative writer.

As Erick Erickson points out in this article, the owner of the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers didn't flip on a switch the other day and suddenly become possessed by the evil spirit of racism. In fact, it turns out, that Donald Sterling has a long history of spouting off racist views.

Wet Victory

Alex had a baseball game in Washington, Iowa, last night and his team defeated the Washington team 11-1. Alex had the first out of the game, catching a pop fly when he was playing left field, and he had the last out of the game, when he was playing first base as the ball was fielded and thrown to him prior to the batter making it to first base. Afterwards, we went to McDonald's and then drove home. I drove 112 miles yesterday and think I was asleep less than 10 minutes after my head rested on my pillow.

Mistakes

College students all over the United States - perhaps all over the world - drink booze and some of them drink too much and get behind the wheel or, in the case of Peter Jok, on a moped. http://thegazette.com/subject/sports/iowas-jok-arrested-for-owi-20140427#ixzz302xJDdfJ

I read this story and wondered about how my life could have changed for the much worse if I had been picked up for drunk driving when I was in college and, in retrospect, even after college. The fact that I would ever get behind the wheel after drinking booze and think that I was "okay" to drive home is absurd to me. Why would I do that? Why would I risk not only my life but the lives of strangers?

The worst that ever happened to me is when I was stopped on my way to a bar called Spanky's in downtown Cedar Rapids in the fall of 1988. I was a freshman at Mount Mercy College and it was the Thursday of finals week. I honestly don't remember if I had a final the next day or if I was done with the exams. As I recall, I had actually probably only been drinking booze for about a month. I didn't drink booze in high school and for the majority of that first semester of classes, I didn't begin to drink. I did start drinking, though, after a Freaker's Ball dance on or around Halloween 1988. So, in December 1988, I was new to the effects of booze to my system and I was the designated driver. I think I had drank a couple of wine coolers before we left that night. I accelerated through a yellow light and was pulled over. It was the scariest moments of my life when I was handed a ticket and told that the police officer didn't care how horny we all were, accelerating through a yellow light was not a good choice.

My point is that I get that college students make mistakes and I get that Peter Jok now will probably face scrutiny as a basketball player for the rest of his career. He will be mocked by fans when the Iowa Hawkeyes travel to play in places like Wisconsin, Illinois, and  Minnesota. He will end up paying hefty fines, both monetary and personal, because he will be viewed differently. Personally, I always thought Zach McCabe would be the current Iowa Hawkeye men's basketball player to have issues with the law for no other reason than how competitive he was on the court and his WWE move on the opposing team's player when he flipped the guy and then was promptly ejected.

And now, when I think about how my life has progressed and how busy it has become, I don't think my life has any room for booze. There are too many other things that need to be done and those priorities are harder to accomplish / finish when I'm drunk the night I'm trying to accomplish them or hung over on the morning after. It's more important to me to be sober than it is to drink booze. It's been that way now for 1216 days or 3 years, 4 months, which is how long I haven't drank booze. I don't envision a day when it won't be important for me to be sober. I like that. A lot.

Easy

It's simply too easy for "music fans" or even "musicians in bands" to criticize Metallica. Asking Alexandria is the latest and, in the video here, it's clear they don't like Metallica:

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This article on the Metal Sucks website does a good job of refuting the points made in the video, especially about the assertion that "the only metal band that “managed to hang for dear life was Guns N’ Roses, when they put out the Use Your Illusions records" made in the video by pointing out, "those albums came out just a week apart."

And reading the comments below the video makes me chuckle uncontrollably. How many of the people that post criticisms of Metallica are in a band? Even if you were a drummer playing the most simple 18 Metallica songs, at the end of the gig, you'd be tired. The criticisms about Lars Ulrich are delusional ramblings. 

Finished!

I probably will look back on this moment in time and question why I didn't rip all of Margaret's CDs. I got to the last 19 and was pretty much burned out. At least a couple of them had issues as far as being able to be ripped and I didn't go downstairs, at that point, to try the Elkader PC to see if I could have more success. Ultimately, I put the CD-Rs in the soft case that holds her collection and called it done. In all, I think I gained at least 300 albums from this side project, which puts me behind my schedule of the reconversion.

I did write a DOS batch file to get the totals for the music_shell folder on the My Cloud drive and that number is 42, 211. I need to decide how to get my collection onto an external hard drive, which I need to purchase, in order to be able to bring it in to work with me. As of right now, I only have Uncle Rico rehearsals, Bayside's "Cult" release, and a few others to listen to at work. Ironically, I didn't even put my headphones on yesterday at work. Maybe the days of sitting, listening, and writing at work are over, though I can't say one day of not listening to music is a trend.

As I look ahead to the month of May, I can't help but chuckle. As Alex's final Babe Ruth baseball season gets into motion, I don't know if it's realistic to think I will be able to get back on track with the reconversion schedule.

• Tuesday - Alex plays in Washington, Iowa. 
• Wednesday night, there was a scheduled Uncle Rico rehearsal, but it's been cancelled - Greg can't make it.
• Thursday, Alex has a baseball game. 
• Friday, I think we are taking Megan's bike up to Northtowne Schwinn in Cedar Rapids to have it looked at. 
• Saturday, Alex has a doubleheader in Riverside and I'm hoping we are done in time to go to 5:30 Mass in Riverside. 
• Sunday - I don't have anything on the calendar, but I'm sure something will present itself to us.

Not complaining about the reality of life in 2014.

Sorry, Your Call did not Go Through

It turns out that E.T. couldn't phone home because he was buried in a landfill in New Mexico.
http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/video-games/e-t-wins-extra-life-after-crew-digs-atari-grave-n91346

Nearly Done

Margaret has 306 CDs and I have 19 left. They are mostly what I describe as "manuals" in the sense that I have to manually enter the information about the music because they are CDs that were not available in a store. That means the database that Windows Media Player uses does not have information about the artist, album, or any other identifying information in it. These take longer to do because I have to change Windows Media Player to not automatically rip the CD when it is inserted because I have to change the artist, album and other information to whatever it is. For example, Margaret has 3 mix CDs from 2001 that are on CD-Rs. I have to manually enter the information. I'm not complaining though.

It also appears, as of this moment, that Uncle Rico will not rehearse on Wednesday, April 30. Greg (bass / vocals) closes on his house on Thursday, May 1, and sent out an email that he has a lot to get done between now and then.

Next Metallica Tour of the United States is tentatively set for ...

2016? 2016>?!?!?!?

Oh no, that won't do... http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/metallica-are-in-the-fourth-inning-of-their-next-album-20140424

Good Intentions

I'm pretty sure the intentions were good with this user guide, but the implementation is a failure. It's a failure because the first two pages of the PDF, which provide information about how to use the user guide shows up in the table of contents, meaning, that the user goes back a page (or two) to read information that is listed in the table of contents. It's a pet peeve. Certainly, I am okay with the content in the first two pages. Telling the user "Display examples:The LCD Monitor Display examples may be different from actual display screens." is a fairly typical disclaimer to avoid getting tech support phone calls with the person calling in saying, "The screen capture on page 74 does / does not show the Widget field, but I don't / do have the Widget field when I go there in the system."

This user guide does it as well. Again, I am perfectly fine with the content - just don't make me flip backwards because the table of contents is listing something that, if I am reading sequentially, I just read!

The Other Side of the Equation - Just to for Balance

I have a Ludwig Vistalite drum set. It has a 24" bass drum, a 13" mounted tom, and two 16" floor toms. I've often fantasized about how it would be so excellent to have a huge double bass drum set. I know that in my current band, Uncle Rico, as well as in the previous bands I've ever played in, including Lou's Classic Ride, Corporate Prisoner, and Old Stew, that I have no justification whatsoever for a huge double bass drum set - I would never use it outside of my basement. Still, it doesn't stop me from thinking about the picture in this post and what an awesome set of drums it would be to have.
Editor's Note: The picture that was here is no longer available.
In other news, I have 36,629 files in the Daughter drive on the MyCloud drive, which includes 1544 files in the ___Margaret directory, which is where I'm putting all of the files from the CDs of hers that I rip. I have her permission to reorder the CDs in her two CD holders to be in alphabetical order so I am using the power of Windows Explorer to show me the correct order. I also have three tops to three spindles set up to separate the CDs into 3 groups. Bands A-H go in one, I-P in another, and Q-Z in a third. That will help me with the alphabetizing of the CDs. I chuckled a bit when I thought about how many times I worked with Mrs. Bacon, my 4th grade teacher, on alphabetizing and using key words in the dictionary. It was a skill I struggled to learn but I now use it anytime I am doing a project, like Margaret's, and it just makes me recall how frustrating it was to be struggling with something but to then, years later, to see the value in that struggle. I haven't yet figured out how the time I spend ripping Margaret's 300 CDs are going to throw off my reconversion schedule goal date of 12/1/2014. Looking at the schedule, I think after September, the schedule was somewhat softer. I should be working on Spindle #21, but that's on hold while the Elkader PC and the Toshiba work on Margaret's CDs.

Taking a Chance

Our neighbors, Ron and Margaret Rainey, and their kids, Wade, Sally, and Mary, are moving. Ron took a job at Dartmouth as their soccer coach. They have been our neighbors for about 8 years.

Margaret and I have always gotten along well. A few years back, I borrowed her CDs and ripped a bunch of them. However, because I never really could fathom that they would move, I didn't rip all of them. Now that they are moving, I began the project of ripping her 300 CDs. I have made some good progress and I hope to be done in the next few days. It's going to throw off the schedule for the reconversion, though, and that's taking a chance that I will miss my self-imposed December 1, 2014, deadline for ripping all of my CDs. It was already at risk when I bought the CDs in Indy, during NCYC, and now, with Margaret's 300 CDs being added to the timeline, it's going to be interesting.

Once May begins, our lives will become insanely busy and, frankly, it won't slow down until .... hell, it may never slow down. I won't go into the details, but with Alex's Babe Ruth baseball schedule, and Megan's upcoming activities, which include her involvement with the West High production of "Annie", prom, a day in Des Moines for IAMB, and then the Europe trip, I will be very busy. I'm not complaining - it's just going to be very busy.

Katatonia Drummer Departs

Katatonia opened for Opeth when Kevin Herren and I drove to the Twin Cities to see Opeth. News today is that their drummer is leaving, which sucks. I liked his playing on that night at First Avenue.

Perfection is Required

I've heard it all and think this trend should be stopped. Immediately. If a musician, from living legend BB King to the local band in the bar down the street has a bad show, it was a bad show. Where's my apology from Motley Crue for the two concerts I saw that were awful? BB King has to apologize because he had a bad show? Isn't this the same as apologizing because I'm human? Musicians are human. Period. That's the way it is. Stop putting celebrities, defined as musicians, professional athletes, collegiate athletes, and anyone in any way involved with movies, television, or radio, on this pedestal and expecting a human being to be perfect. Let the one with no sin throw the first stone. How many of the people that were booing BB King are musicians?

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Oh, by the way, I was able to get a count of the combined / consolidated music_reconversion directory that is currently on a drive called "Daughter" on the MyCloud drive: 35,575. However, before getting all stoked about it, I *know* that there are a lot of files that are duplicates (as in they have a (2) in the file name and I also know that there are a lot of files that have weird characters immediately preceding the .mp3 extension. Today is Holy Thursday and I'm playing drums at 6 PM Mass. I doubt I will do anything with these files until Monday, 4/21.

Paradigm

I worked at a software company for a dozen years that I've described on this blog. One of the five that started the company, LJS, held a class about paradigms. It was many years ago but if I recall correctly, he divided all of the employees into groups and then, for two days in a row, we met in the empty side of the building. Each time we met, the first agenda item was to watch a video about paradigms. What I remember about the video was the example of the Swiss watch maker company. For whatever reason, that company didn't adapt to the changes around them and, eventually, the company went out of business. After watching the video, we had a discussion about what could be changed to make our life better at work. We talked about this statement: "What is impossible today, but if it could be done, it would change the way in which we do our work." Unfortunately, that may be a cheap paraphrasing of what we talked about since it has been several years since I saw the phrase on a PowerPoint slide at a monthly staff meeting or heard LJS say it.

Side note: I also remember that on the second day, a co-worker openly challenged LJS and asked why we had to watch the video. In her defense, she felt the discussion we had were addressing some workplace issues. She asked, "Do we have to watch the video?" Apparently, LJS felt disrespected and ordered her to leave the room. By the end of the day, she had been terminated.

Back to the point. In my career, I've gone through several paradigm shifts. In bullet list form, here are some of the ones that stick out in my mind, though I will tell you that digging through this blog would reveal quite a few more. Here's the bullet list with some highlights of what paradigm shifts I made at that employer over those 12 years:

• I began creating online Help with RoboHelp in a format called WinHelp. In the early days, I considered a "great" and "useful" online Help system to mean that to access field-level information, you clicked a "Help" icon, which accessed a secondary window, which had a list of fields. To get field-level information, you had to click each field individually. 
• The next shift was when the makers of RoboHelp released a DLL for WinHelp called "WinHelp 2000". The selling point of WinHelp 2000 was that it gave you a TOC pane on the left and your content displayed in a pane on the right. The downside of WinHelp 2000 was that secondary windows were not supported. To use WinHelp 2000, I had to remove all of the lists of fields and change to numbered procedures. 
• The next shift was when Microsoft announced that they were discontinuing support for WinHelp. For years, there had been a movement to convert from WinHelp to HTML but I staunchly stood firm as a WinHelp supporter. I refused to convert because there was no business case to do so. Microsoft's announcement gave me the business case to convert. When I began converting my 100 WinHelp files to HTML, I used tables to control my layout. 
• The next shift was when I learned that web pages that used tables to control layout were not highly regarded. Others in the technical writing community were creating HTML-based online help that only used tables for tabular content. 
• The next shift was hearing about something called CSS. Span tags changed my world because I could create a span tag and use it to globally change the appearance of specific text. I began replacing the single span class called "programname" to make text bold with multiple span classes, one each for each UI element. I created span classes named "check_box", "menu_option", "button", and "drop-down." 
• The next shift was hearing about something called JavaScript. I saw a web page that used  JavaScript to create a mini-TOC for the web page. I stopped manually coding a list of headings on each page. 
• Somewhere in the mix of all of this, I heard about DOS batch files. I had been manually copying files from one directory to another but with an amazing command called "XCOPY", I could do all of that manual work automatically (automagically?) by creating a DOS batch file that compiled my RoboHelp projects and copied PDFs from one directory to another prior to publishing. 
• The next shift that was happening over all of this time was to take ownership of the content. I exhumed "Hit the Enter button" in the documentation. I got rid of all the ugly language and poor writing.

I am now undergoing yet another paradigm shift at work and I accept the challenge. I've been a technical writer since 2/10/1995 and feel the beginnings of a paradigm shift in what I do at work, which is write software documentation. For example, why do I need to write that to add a class, you select a button that has a label "Add Class"? Why do I need to write that to enable pay notification, you select a check box that has a label "Enable Pay Notification." Why not tell the user that when you 'enable pay notification' this or that or the other thing happens in the system and what outcome is achieved by selecting that check box?

A lot of this is shifting in my mind on a daily basis. I don't know what it's going to all look like, but I'm excited.

Fade to Obscurity

According to http://www.pittnews.com/arts_and_entertainment/article_c34e463e-c44c-11e3-826b-001a4bcf6878.html?mode=story "The fact that Metallica hasn’t faded to obscurity after a 23-year lapse in quality is a testament to how beloved it is within the musical pantheon."

Really?

Rehearsal, Recap, & Retirement

Uncle Rico had a good rehearsal last night. I thought that I nailed a lot of my parts in the songs we went through. My tempos were fairly solid and that made me feel good. I liked the way "Pump It Up" sounded and was very happy that I made it through "Dancing with Myself" with my limbs still attached. "Wonderful Tonight" felt good and so did "What I Like About You," "8675309 Jenny" and "You May Be Right." At the previous rehearsal, I had issues with "Oh Boy" and "Squeeze Box" but I would say I practiced enough to correct those issues to the extent I didn't have them again last night.

I did have issues with "Blister in the Sun" and the end of "Rocking Me." "Blister" just never settled into the groove with my snare part and, to be honest, I had noticed that the last time we played it as a group and had actually focused on it during practice time on the Yamaha electronic set, but thought I had corrected the issues with my parts through practice. Not so. The end of "Rockin' Me" was kind of a surprise as far as not being able to flow through it.

That song has given me fits in the past. I still vividly remember hearing the version of that song that Old Stew played at Bonehead's in spring 1992. That recorded version was a disaster. I don't really remember going through that song multiple times at rehearsal, even when we were playing gigs, as in getting to the end of it "Rocking Me" and then going through it again. I really wish I would have been much more diligent about having a recorder going at each and every rehearsal and documenting the path we were taking to be able to play outside of Catfish's house.

The takeaway from the issue I was having with the ending of "Rocking Me" is I will listen to the recording by Steve Miller as well as the recording from last night and try to resolve what I was playing and what I should be playing.

The retirement aspect of this post is that I think "Suspicious Minds" (and perhaps others) have been retired from the setlist for now. For me, "Suspicious Minds" has been a lot like "American Girl" was with Lou's Classic Ride. I wanted to nail my part and it was hit and miss. I won't miss trying to hit the change from 4/4 to 3/3.

At Work, but Not Slaving Away

Megan is taking her ACT test at Regina, which is on the same side of town as my employer so, rather than take her, return home, and then come back to get her, I came into the office and am working. I love my job and this project I'm working on is shaping up nicely.

Before I came in, I checked in on the copy job on the Elkader PC which, when done, will create a single and consolidated directory of all of my music collection. I saw that around 400 folders were copied yesterday. I think it was in the Ms when I left. As I said on the project page, I hope to be able to run the DOS batch file Monday AM.

Miss a Day, Miss a bunch of Stuff Happening

Just a ton of things happening so here's a list of the events / news that I have deemed worthy of listing on my blog, but in no particular order:

1. ISU Suspends VEISHEA for the Remainder of 2014; Future of Event in Jeopardy
2. Possible changes in our neighborhood that I am hoping happen for the family involved, but also (selfishly) hope it doesn't happen.
3. The ObamaCare project manager resigns, making some very happy.
   
4. KISS was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after weeks of controversy and drama between current members Paul Stanley & Gene Simmons and former members Ace Frehley & Peter Criss. Peter Criss was one of the drummers, along with Billy Joel's Liberty DeVito, that made me want to play drums when I was young. I am happy that they are in the Hall of Fame. Further, I agree with Lars Ulrich that Deep Purple belong in there as well.
5. I am hoping I can purchase this CD collection for $5. Here's the text from the ad on Craigslist:
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   Eminem, mudvayne. Mostly hard rock and metal groups. They all play great. It's only $5, so I'm not going to list them all. Think of it as a surprise!
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   This is the picture that shows the collection:
   
   
6. Three Days Grace have released a lyric video for a new song called "Painkiller". I listened to it as I drove to work, but didn't watch the video. Here it is:
   

Sorry to See You Go

As a general rule, I'm saddened when a college athlete decides it is in his or her best interest to transfer to another college. http://hawkcentral.com/2014/04/08/stokes-meyer-to-transfer-from-iowa-basketball-team/

Ultimate Warrior Joins Ultimate Resting Place

"Just three days after being inducted into the company's Hall of Fame, iconic WWE superstar Ultimate Warrior died Tuesday of unknown causes. He was 54."

Reading about his death caused me to think about my own mortality. He was 54. That's only 10 years older than me! And to leave a wife and two kids behind.

Here's a summary of his career: http://prowrestling.about.com/od/thewrestlers/p/ultimatewarrior.htm?nl=1

Death sucks.

Acoustic Battery

Nearly a Week Hold, but ... you know

"You must be busy" an editor once wrote to me as a lead-in to why he wasn't going to publish the column I had just submitted to him. And it's true - my mind has not been focused on writing blog posts here. Life in 2014, especially with Alex's Babe Ruth baseball season about to ramp up with his first practice tonight, is only going to become more busy as April unfolds in front of me. Sometimes, things slip through the cracks, like this exchange on the HATT list that is almost a week old. I just came across it in my Sent Items while looking for something else and so, before I moved on to other things, I wanted to get this preserved as a blog post for my own future reference.
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On 4/2/2014, Ari wrote:
 
Does anyone have a chart that compares SmartDocs, Doc2Help and Flare for SINGLE SOURCING (not for Helps)? I have yet to see a third-party, objective chart that includes all three.

As a sole TC at my company, I am evaluating options for single-sourcing our Word-based user software documentation (with PDF output, no Helps at this time), and whether to leave the content as Word-based). I will be trying out the trial versions of these products in the coming weeks. (I do have FrameMaker and RoboHelp experience but do not plan to use these.) 

I responded with this:
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Ari,

I don’t have a chart to send you. I used the trial version of D2H a couple of years ago and sat in a demo of SmartDocs at the 2012 WritersUA conference in Memphis, TN. Most of our legacy docs are in Word so I was looking for the same type of solution. I have received a lot of emails from Flare touting their single sourcing abilities, but did not install the trial.

I did spend some time with Doc-to-Help and was able to tag content for a specific user guide output – so it worked fine. There were test projects on their website and that helped me out a lot in addition to how their staff went above and beyond what I would have expected them to do for me using the software on a trial. I would recommend Doc-to-Help.

That’s not to say the SmartDocs people were not very good and accommodating as well. I know they are getting ready to release a new version that touts many new features so I wouldn’t rule them out. The thing I remember about SmartDocs is that they didn’t have a built-in way to generate browser-based online Help so if you think that is going to be a future requirement, you may need to consider that – I have no idea if they ended up implementing that ability or not.

Our situation is that we had a user guide for System A and we had Client 1. Then we got Client 2 and because there was no single source solution, the previous TWer took the user guide for System A and Client 1, saved a copy of it, and modified it. Like all writers seem to do, when the writer read something that didn’t flow right, it was changed for Client 2. Over time, more and more clients were added and the same workflow of making a copy (as a base) of the Word doc was followed. Eventually, we have ended up with different versions of the same procedure to accomplish a task.

For example, in Client 1’s user guide, you may see this:

Adding a Widget
1.    Go to Path 1 > Path 2.
2.    Click Add.
3.    Enter the details.
Note:  The User ID and password fields are required.
4.    Click Save.

And in Client 2’s user guide, you may see this:

Adding a Widget
1.    Go to Path 1 > Path 2.
2.    Click Add, and then enter the details. The User ID and password fields are required.
3.    Click Save.

This is a simple example and some of the differences are more detailed than my example, but you get the idea. My point is that if your existing content has anything like this, where the same section / content is in more than one document, you will have to figure out the “real” version of that content outside of the tool. I was working on creating a single version of “Adding a Widget” so that content could be placed within all the outputs that need it. The mess I was trying to sort out was very intimidating so if you are going to face that, good luck! <grin>

All that said, we are not going to be using a single source solution with Word. We are moving our documentation to Confluence, which has pros and cons like most tools, and implementing single sourcing that way.

It's Alive!

New life is breathed into this controversy every time someone writes about it. Personally, I use one space in both my private, public, and work writing.

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/one-or-two-spaces-after-a-period/

Bad Mood

Sometimes, there's this aura of "bad mood" that flows like a tide at the end of the day, crashing into the unsuspecting beach and as the beach attempts to stay still and absorb the force of the tide, the beach slowly loses ground until it feels like there is no use in even putting up a logical statement. Bad moods suck and it's even worse when the person *in* the bad mood feels as though the world is out to get them.

That lady at Scheel's needed to realize what she was going through, at that moment, couldn't possibly be the worst moment she will ever experience. Peace to the stranger.

Not Even Close!

A year later, those WM XXX predictions read like horrible fiction. Not a single one of them came true! Not one, unless you count that there was a divas battle royal. The predicted winner (Charlotte) hasn't been in the limelight. Oh well.

I didn't spend a lot of time doing what I would have thought I would spend time doing at this time last week. A few things changed. First of all, I spent a lot of Saturday morning ripping CDs and copying files from the 2 TB external hard drive that had died. I did this to get every thing *off* that drive because I do not intend to resume taking it back and forth to work. I wanted every thing off of it before the drive itself died. I will say that I was pleasantly surprised that the drive was merely a victim of some electrical snafu and not an actual hard drive failure. My plan was to copy every thing off of that drive and move it to the My Cloud drive and, for the most part, I was successful. The next step is to consolidate the files that I had already located on the My Cloud drive and the files I copied from the 2 TB hard drive and to weed out the duplicates. I am not going to update the reconversion stats page because I don't think the number would be accurate since I copied the same files into the 'master' music_shell folder structure and instructed Windows to create *(2).mp3 files if there was already a file in the destination directory. Using SeachMyFiles, I should be able to get rid of those duplicates fairly quickly.

Later, since we had brought Grandma's China hutch to our house, I went through the furnace room and retrieved the China place settings that we had received as wedding presents. This was a large project and while it was time consuming, I do like that I got it completed. As I worked, I listened to my recordings of last Wednesday's Uncle Rico rehearsal - I liked what I heard.

Allow me to write about it. We rehearsed from 6:30 (by the time we were ready to go) until 9:30. As of now, the two songs that gave me the most trouble were "Dancing with Myself" and "Suspicious Minds." Honestly, I'd be willing to dump both songs. I'd justify "DWM" being dismissed because we already play "Mony Mony" and I'd justify "SM" being dismissed because, frankly, I just don't play it well. We messed around with "Jailhouse Rock" and "Hound Dog" at rehearsal and those were much more fun to play than "SM." I guess every band / group I play in is always going to have a song that takes a bit longer to get into the groove on, as I recall how the drumbeat for "American Girl" took longer to "get" but once I nailed it, it turned into a fun song for me - the most difficult song became one of my favorite songs. I plan to practice each and every night this week to prepare for our next rehearsal on Monday, 4/14, at 6 PM.

Back to Saturday's activities. Mark, Susie, Jonathan, and Tyler came to our house. While the boys played, Mark and I defeated Karen / Susie in Euchre. We won both games. I blame the Euchre app on my phone for making me a better player. They were still here when it would have been time to leave for 5:15 Mass. We ended the night watching the semi-finals of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. WI lost to KY and CT defeated FL, which sets up KY v. CT for the national title tomorrow night.

On Sunday, we went to 11 AM Mass and I played drums. It was nice to play again during Mass. Father Paige called me Little Drummer Boy and I told him that not many people called me little. I also talked to John, a longtime member of our parish, about the retreat last week. He went to all three nights whereas I went to Monday's session only. I also had a conversation with Len as I told him about the songs Uncle Rico is playing. Then, after Mass, I had a conversation with Perry, who sometimes plays drums at 11 AM Mass. Overall, I may sound like a chatty Paul doll when I write about all of that, but I really enjoyed each of those conversations.

After we got home, I ended up making two trips to Lowe's to purchase 10 and then 12 bags of cypress mulch for $3.98 / bag so nearly $97 in mulch. Karen, Alex, and I spend most of the afternoon spreading it around the house. Later, I helped Logan and Alex put together a table we bought at Menard's on Friday night.

As for this week, it is going to be busy. There are haircuts, derm appointments, ACT Prep, PT (Alex) and baseball practice among the other normal things going on around our house. I predict I will spend time at night working on work since my big project is due 4/15/14 and, frankly, the work I've done is being remolded from what I've done into a different style and, equally frankly, I don't yet see the benefit of redesigning it. I used an existing doc system that was done for a recent project and I thought it was looking pretty good.

As kind of a side note, that project's style was to do something like this:
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Heading

To do..., follow these steps.

Access Menu Option 1
(graphic)
Select A
(graphic)
Enter the details and select Save.
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The rewrite is shaping into this:

Heading

To do..., follow these steps.

1, Access Menu Option 1

2. Select A
3. Enter the details and select Save.

The results of doing these steps are....
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What's kind of odd is that I'm seriously questioning whether numbered steps are useful when the procedure to do something is so few steps. Will it cause confusion to have unnumbered steps when there's so few steps? I'm not really sure.

Anyways, it's nearly midnight and I'm going to bed. I wrote this long-ish post tonight because I can't say whether I will have a lot of time to write this upcoming week.

Wrestlemania XXX Predictions

So, the day after Wrestlemania XXIX, Bleacher Report published an article about Wrestlemania XXX, to be held on April 6, 2014.

Because WWE PPV results mesh together, these are the results from Wreslemania XXIX.

Mash Mish of Stuff

• Heard this song at Kohl's yesterday. It is from an album that isn't being released until 5/7/14. So damn catchy!
  
  
• Politics on both sides of the aisle:
• Republicans:
• Wasn't there a time in American history when "the best candidate" ran for public office? Does someone's fetishes make a candidate "not the best?" Whatever happened to keeping your bedroom life personal? Erick Erickson offers this article:
• "Jake Rush is challenging Congressman Ted Yoho and also happens to be into Satanic symbolism, vampirism, “rape” photos, whips, chains, and … you get the picture. If you don’t, I’ve got the pictures": http://www.redstate.com/2014/04/01/satan-witchcraft-role-play-and-challengers/
  
• Democrats:
• From my "Fox News First" daily email:
  Not the best week for Braley - Fox News: “Iowa Senate candidate Bruce Braley has had a tough week after a conservative Super PAC released a video of him mocking GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley as a farmer who has “never been to law school,” and it is only getting worse. The Des Moines Register reported Thursday that a press release the Democratic congressman issued to tout his history of fighting for farmers misspells the terms detasseling and baling. ‘Bruce grew up in rural Iowa and worked on Iowa farms, detassling (sic) corn and bailing(sic) hay,’ it reads. After the typos were pointed out, Braley spokesman Jeff Giertz said on Twitter he lost his fourth-grade spelling bee by misspelling ‘journey.’ ‘I guess my old habits are hard to break,’ he said. Additionally, Buzzfeed reported on Thursday that a photo of an Iowa farm Braley posted to his Facebook page in 2013 is actually a photo of a farm in England. Braley spokesman Drew Pusateri said the photo is being corrected, and it has been taken down."
• Coach Fran McCaffery is going through hell off the court. His son Patrick has been diagnosed with cancer. This article made me feel good about our society, though the fact that someone would call after he said he would call is not "amazing" to me - it's following through on doing what you said you were going to do. It should be expected.
• The final WWE Raw before Wrestlemania XXX was on last night. Good buildup.