There's a kinda hush...

It's been a pretty quiet week on the Studio front this week, so I've been spending some time sitting in my fat controller's chair updating this and installing that and fiddling with a new GPS I purchased through EBAY. I definitely need to be told where to go and how to get there, a poor stumbling, wandering being such as myself often needs a little clear concise direction.

I also received a new hi tech gadget from my parents who just returned from their overseas holiday. They brought me back a Merlin which is a media player/recorder with an internal 120g hard drive, awesome little gadget, they managed to pick this up in Dubai, so I have been sorting through some of my favorite movies, and dumping them onto the media player. I had to include Naked Lunch, The man who wasn't there, Blade Runner and I am considering transferring my David Lynch and Woody Allen collection to the device as well, after that I will probably start on my favorite albums.

It was also a week of good news, I received confirmation this week that J and I have a permanent weekly gig at a local restaurant, we did our first one last Friday, and it went well, though could have been a few more diners to hear us. The management were quite impressed and I believe there could be additional work if they have a booked function. J and I haven't had the duo going since my medical problems about a year back, so it was good to be a musical team again.

I also played a gig last night with a few musician friends (some I had never played with before) for an organization called merry makers, who are a social group for adults with disabilities. It was a fun night, they really knew how to kick up their heels and get into the spirit of things. We played mainly standard country and rock songs, and they (and we) absolutely had a ball. It was so great to see an audience enjoying themselves that much. I even spotted a few of my music therapy clients, they were quite surprised to see me on stage with a band.

In the next few days I hope to finish off a song I've been working on, and we might even see something new from the collaborative group ( I think Dave will be back from interstate this week ). So keep your ears wide open.


Ecca.

Lost Weekend

I've been toying about this next entry over the last few days, but each time I poise my eager fingers over an awaiting keyboard, something screws up or comes up, one of the two.

On Thursday I was frustrated to discover that this computer had suffered a virus attack ( the one where your wallpaper gets changed to a fake spy ware detected warning message). I actually had the same virus some months ago and managed to get rid of it with a little research on the net, so this time, I simply took the same action (or what I could remember I did last time) and it seemed to have disappeared but basically just pulled it's head in to reveal itself with greater impact a few hours later ( I think they call them Trojans because they disguise themselves but maybe they should be called turtles).

I spent most of Friday in town in the rain, doing music therapy, visiting the library, and spending 2 1/2 hours at the doctor (that not waiting, that's actually seeing the doctor). Nothing major, just getting some paperwork filled so as I can complete my music therapy degree.
At the library I was reading a book about the making of the Pink Floyd movie 'The Wall', one of my favorite albums. I was surprised to discover that when Bob Geldof was offered the lead role by his manager in the back of a cab, he turned it down because he was never into Floyd, and thought they sucked badly. Little did he know that the cab driver was up being Roger Water's brother, so this soon got back to him. Well he got the part anyway. Freaky stuff.

Later in the afternoon, I was to play at a cafe in Gosford with one of my good mates, though the owner pulled the pin on the night when they didn't have any patrons ( as I was packing up, group of fifteen arrived ).

Later on Friday evening when I got home, my partner reported that the computer locked up, so I rebooted and ran my antivirus software. I left this running overnight as you do, and the next morning I could tell something wasn't right, the antivirus software had locked up. This time after rebooting I was locked in a logging on logging off cycle without actually getting to my desktop to do anything (even in safe mode), so I saw this as a perfect opportunity to reinstall windows on a different partition, and copy important data to the non windows hard drive, and then zap the windows hard drive (format), and reinstall windows.

After the above process I was presented with an unusual blank desktop, where I am used to icons everywhere, so I had a big task ahead of me getting my most used programs back up and running. Come Saturday afternoon I was adequately functional again.

Fortunately, I run three computers here, with only this one connected to the net, both my main music computers are Internet free to prevent this very scenario, so no music or musical utilities were lost or harmed in this process.

On Saturday evening I had a dinner appointment with my old band members at a restaurant we frequently visited in our glory days (maybe glory hours), which ended up being a very pleasant evening. I caught up with all the Zubrick gossip, my partner J also enjoyed some intelligent conversation (which she definately doesn't really get too much of from me).

Tools (our aptly named bass player), J and I enjoyed a few hours at the local club testing out the payout capabilities of the pokies ( not the best results I'm afraid, but an entertaining few hours ). The selection process was all in J's hands so we obviously played the cutest, noisiest machines to be found. J is into all the bells and whistles even if the payout is minuscule as long as the machine sings and the animation is good, she's happy. A payout is just an unexpected bonus.

Sunday morning was spent sleeping, sitting lazily with J, rebuilding my email address book, installing a few additional applications, and finally going over to J's folks place for Father's Day. I spent a few hours there watching 'Down Periscope', and parts of various war DVDs whilst enjoying J's mum's delicious rock cakes.

My folks are still on their Mediterranean escape, probably in Dubai now doing some major shopping deals with the Arabs. They are back later this week, and I am sure they will have some great stories to tell. I would like to do some more overseas travel myself soon , I'd like to visit Thailand, maybe do a spiritual quest in India or something along those lines.

I'll probably spend this coming week tweaking this computer back it's former self and going through some material for some upcoming gigs. The next few weekends are booked with a country gig, a charity gig, and a corporate gig a few weeks after that with a fair bit of new material.

I may get a chance to do some recording with the guys this week, so if anything new gets finished you'll be able to hear it here first.

That should bring you all pretty well up to date, so enjoy your week ahead, and stay happy !

Ecca