923

grr!

my keyboard isn’t working – that is my piano keyboard, not my typing keyboard. i hooked it up just like i did the last time i had it set up, but nothing happened. usually there’s a little icon that appears in the systray that indicates i’ve got USB hardware plugged in, and everything just works… but now, no little icon in the systray, and no sound, even when i trigger the oscillator manually… wait a second… well, i figured out that if i turn up the volume (D’OH!) i get sound when i trigger the oscilator manually, but i still don’t get any MIDI control…

stupid windoesn’t… 8P

922

yesterday this icon showed up on my cell phone, and i can’t figure out what it means. it’s an icon that looks like a speaker with sound waves coming out of it, and it’s not the voice-mail indicator, nor the indicator for any kind of messaging system the phone has, and it’s not the earpiece volume indicator, nor the indicator for anything you have control over the volume of that the phone has… and there’s no way to set the phone so that it has text-messages rather than icon-messages for alerts – like the icons that mysteriously appear and then won’t go away, like this phone has… and the quick reference guide that came with the phone doesn’t have a picture of the phone with all the icons lit and an explanation of what they mean, like every other cell phone that i have owned, which means i’m likely going to go down to the mall, where there’s a verizon wireless store to get them to tell me what it means. 8/

yesterday i got an incense order, and friday i got a postcard order back from the printer. also, yesterday i finally found the CD mailer that i was looking for, so that i can mail the CD i got from to darol, who first turned me on to xir music, so i’ll probably go to the mall after i go to the post office. i hate having to go to the verizon store for just about any reason, because 1) i used to work for the company that makes the software that goes inside the phones they sell people, so in spite of the fact that i don’t know what all the little icons mean, i know more about what goes on inside the phones than they do, which means that 2) i can tell right away when they don’t know how the software works and lie to me instead of saying that they don’t know, which is every time i go to the verizon store. i don’t like being lied to, and i’d prefer that if they are going to lie to somebody, that they do it with someone other than me, especially when they are going to lie to me and then charge me to use their products.

we had a fremont phil rehearsal last night: the first time we’ve gotten together since the MF ended. we discussed the issue that goes along side the fact that fred wants to “license” his music to us, which is that if we’re not going to play any of fred’s music, we’ve got to start coming up with more music to replace it. we’ve currently got a good deal of music which isn’t fred’s (which is a good thing, since we’re scheduled to play at “Shower To The People”, seanjohn and josh’s late night cabaret thing, on friday), but we need more. to that end, i’ve decided that i really need to set up my keyboard so that i can do things like start arranging The Holy Modal Rounders’ “Euphoria” – which we want to play at OCF this year – and fixing the parts for my own pieces… and, potentially, creating new ones. we’ve got to have something to replace “Pyros On Parade” (which those of you who have actually seen the Fremont Phil will probably know as “The Siren Song”).

i got a “supplement” at costco the last time i was there, which says that it compares to “focus factor”, whose spam i have noticed on TV for the past couple of years. it has at least 10 lines of 6-point type of ingredients, and provides at least 100% RDA of nutrients like vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, B12, C, D and E. it is claims that it is “nutrition for your brain” and it “supports concentration and memory”.

well, i need that…

i need that… my memory has become even more sieve-like in the past few years, which is not to say that it was a great retainer of recent information before my injury… not to mention my… er… um… uh…

8/

aphasia, that’s it… aphasia…

8/

but, at the same time, it also says “these statements have not been evaluated by the FDA”, which makes me think that i don’t really know whether this will do anything at all or not, despite my general suspicion of government agencies.