June 2005 Archives

Got in a car accident yesterday. Got cited for "improper lookout." It happened in a coned-off construction area not far from my home.

Very little damage to the other vehicle involved. The driver had some neck pain and was taken by ambulance to a hospital. I hope she's okay. She lives close-by and is in our ward.

I had Lucy and Eli in the car with me. We were going to the credit union and over to Thom's house to get his CD recorder to take to the Gallivan Center concert. No one in our car was hurt.

The Subaru's not so good.

Subaru - smooshed.

As can be seen here, there's damage to the hood, the headlights, running lights, sidemarker lights, grill, bumper, and maybe some minor damage to the fenders. I don't know what kind of damage there is under the hood -- there was no water leaking or anything like that. The cooling fans were pushed back into the engine, so they weren't turning. The power steering pump wasn't delivering any power either, so I'm guessing the belt was either broken or compressed.

I'm going to find out today what I'm looking at, but I'm concerned it will be totalled. NADA says the value of the car is $3900 trade-in and $5550 retail, so if the damages get that high, it probably is a totalled situation. I know very little about car body repair, but I'm guessing this is a two to three thousand dollar repair but I guess it could be higher.

While I was in Vail with Sons Of Nothing last weekend, a couple shocking and unfortunate events transpired back home.

First, on Friday, 18 June, Ed Armstrong, Vice President, Engineering and Shared Services of Sorenson Communications--Christine's boss's boss--passed away in the hospital after dealing with painful surgery complications for over two weeks.

Everyone at Sorenson Communications was stunned. Just a couple days before, it looked like Ed was out of the woods and would be making a recovery, but then it was discovered he had some serious damage to his liver for one reason or another. One thing led to another and Ed had made his wishes that no extraordinary measures were to be taken to keep him alive.

Ed Armstrong was 46 years old.

On Saturday, 19 June, Mistee Brallier, an executive assistant at Sorenson, was killed when a semi plowed into her car along with others on Interstate 80 in the Salt Lake valley.

Mistee Brallier was 35 years old. Her 16-year old daughter was also involved in the crash and was hospitalized with very serious injuries and may be paralyzed.

Double-tragedy for a pretty tight-knit group of tech-workers at Sorenson.

Christine was pretty disturbed by it all. She's only worked at Sorenson for about four months, but during that time had come to admire Ed Armstrong and was seriously considering transferring from quality assurance to engineering with Ed's support.

After Ed died, Christine found out he was also an LDS bishop in his home ward in American Fork. During a brief visit to the hospital, Ed had bore his testimony to Christine and others who had come to visit him.

So, like I said, she was pretty disturbed by what had come to pass.

On Saturday, Christine and I attended Ed's funeral at the church building in American Fork where he had served as bishop. The chapel and cultural hall were packed with people who had come to be a part of the funeral and pay last respects.

Speakers at Ed's funeral spoke about his zeal and passion for everything he had done. People who didn't know Ed very well (like me) found out all kinds of amazing things about Ed. He had converted to LDS when he was a young boy; He had lived in California until about 15 years ago; He had taken in two boys (now 23) his son's age, sent them on missions, and otherwise raised them as his own children; He was singer, guitarist, and co-founder of a rock group--Crossroads--that had performed around the Salt Lake area since 1999.

On 28 May, about three weeks before Ed died, the band played at Jordan Landing in West Jordan. Christine and I took our kids to see some of the show. I remember seeing a woman taking lots of pictures of the band as they played. I'm sure nobody had any clue that evening would be the final performance of Ed Armstrong.

At Saturday's funeral, one of the pictures taken that day had been enlarged and was on display. It's a fantastic picture and I was really taken back by it. I was pleased to find it on Crossroads' website so I could share it here.

Ed Armstrong on 28 May 2005

Most of the funeral speakers spoke a lot about his work as bishop. Of course, it seems like, with the exception of Ed's son David, all the speakers were men who had worked with Ed in some kind of ecclesiastical capacity. Christine and I were just amazed with how much responsibility Ed had taken on for himself and he seemed to excel at it all.

Good funerals always make you think--they make you ponder your own life. Ed's funeral was clearly inspiring for he was a man almost anyone could look up to. I mean, if I could be half as organized as Ed was- I could do so much more with my time. If I had half the faith in the gospel Ed had, I could be a much better member of my church, father, husband, etc.

One thing that popped into my head that I mentioned to Christine as we were driving home afterward was that when I was a child, I was very easily frustrated and felt hopeless a lot. I remember people advising me that determination, hard work, perseverance, etc. were keys to success, but it wasn't information I was able to grasp.

I remember--though I don't recall exactly when it was or what it was--accomplishing something that was outstanding for me and realizing later that it was the direct result of determination and perseverance on my part. I was astounded to discover that what I had been told for so long was actually true!

My self-confidence began to inch upwards as a result of that realization.

I don't know exactly why this popped into my head as a result of attending Ed's funeral, but it did.

Back on the road again. We're just west of Rangley, Colorado. I was hoping we would get home by 5, but that's looking less likely. I think it'll be more like 6.

Last night's show was not nearly as well attended as Friday's was, but there were several very enthusiastic fans -- some repeat attendees from the previous night. The show went off with fewer technical glitches than the night before whic was a bonus.

Thom cut every original tune out of the set with the exception of Mr. Serious -- something I think was a mistake. But, oh well. The originals are sounding good, but need a little more stage-time, in my opinion.

I spent a lot of my free time yesterday working on some Iodynamics projects. Thom, Matt and Juli went to see the new Batman movie while I'm guessing Tim, Tim, Greg, and Amanda tried to recuperate from the night before.

I finally made it to the jacuzzi this time as I remembered my swim trunks. I only spent about 20 minutes there and felt like my flesh was going to slide off my bones. It was awesome.

I have uploaded pictures taken by me and Amanda to the Sons Of Nothing site. There are a lot of pictures from these two gigs.

Matt made the mistake of bringing some Styx MP3s which have been playing for the last hour. These poor, poor souls have had to bear the pain which is listening to me sing along.

I asked Thom, Juli, and Matt if they thought any amount of voice training could give me the ability to produce music of any discernable vocal quality. At first, the immediate response was a loud chorus of, "No!" but then Juli conceded that it may be possible... that "anything's possible." Matt suggested, perhaps if/when I "made it to the celestial kingdom," it's possible I'd be able to sing.

I love how Matt gives me hope. :-)

Today, of course, is Father's Day and I've been thinking about my family a lot as we head back home. Maya has called me twice today either to tell me that Mom really misses me and then to ask me when I think I'll be home.

Last night's show went pretty well. The crowd was into the show and the band did a really good job- especially cranking out a bunch of songs that either haven't ever been played or hadn't been played in a long time.

This trip marks the first time in a couple years that Sons Of Nothing has played One Of These Days. I put together some quick and dirty video for the middle bridge and I'm hoping to get something for the whole song. Thom had some equipment problems during the song last night which is unfortunate. It's on the set list again for tonight, so hopefully Tim and Thom can get that stuff resolved.

Here's a panorama looking out our hotel window. Vail is beautiful during the summer.

Vail panorama - Click for 3680x1188 version

Incidentally, the above panorama was stiched together automagically using The Gimp and the Panora plugin for The Gimp. Open source rocks.

I am really enjoying Fedora Core 4 on this laptop! It boots and shuts down so fast it reminds me of when I was using Linux exclusively at my job at Sorenson Vision in 1998 or so and my computer could get up and running into AfterStep much faster than anyone else in the office who running Windows.

Right now, I'm riding with Thom, Matt, and "de lovely" Juli, in Matt's Durango in Northwestern Colorado an unknown number of miles outside of Rifle where we will probably stop to rest, stretch, and use facilities for a few minutes.

Well -- now you know -- after the incident involving Matt's truck a few weeks ago, Matt got a Durango -- a lot like Juli's, but a different year.

Sons Of Nothing will be playing at The Sandbar in Vail this evening and tomorrow evening. I've been privy to the planned setlist and it's very exciting. The band is planning to knock returning fans on their butts with two very cool lineups of Pink Floyd selections and new Sons Of Nothing originals.

I'm listening to "Father OSA" by Styx... again. It's been forever since I listened to the Styx II album. I used to have it on cassette or vinyl -- can't remember right now. What a great song.

I had a bit of a breakdown this last week. I guess I do this every once in a while, but Christine observed that it's been a relatively long time since it's happened before.

My juggling skills are lacking and always have been. Ever since I graduated from college, I've had recurring nightmares where I find myself either halfway through a semester of school or two weeks from the end of the semester and realize I've messed things up horribly and there's really no way for me to fix things so I can pass my classes.

Since I graduated from school, I've wondered why I keep having these stupid dreams. I think I get it now.

I decided a week or so ago I needed to start doing some pro-active project management with all the projects I have been dealing with. As I sat down and tried to figure out the time requirements for each project and how I was going to spend my hours, I realized there was no way in hell I was going to be able to devote any serious time to any of these projects. This was a distressing discovery and no matter how much I contemplated the problem I was no closer to a solution.

Finally, on Wednesday, I guess my brain could take no more of it and insisted I just stay in bed. A couple clients were more or less freaked out by my unavailable status and I felt like crap about that.

Since then, I've been slowly getting back on my feet. I'm concerned I still haven't addressed the core problem nor have I learned how to better manage these types of things. My biggest problem is I don't even know where to start to change.

"I feel like I'm in the Tour de France... and I'm on a tricycle."

That's pretty much epitomizes how I felt most of today.

It's been an interesting week so far. Monday night, I tried to make a list of all the outstanding Iodynamics projects, estimate the time we could commit to them this week, and note possible personnel assignments. It's the first time I've done anything like that and I'm not satisfied with the results. It needs a lot of work, but it's an early attempt. I'm sure I'll polish the technique and find a better way to do it.

Despite my ambivalence pertaining to my primitive attempt at project management, the experience did give me an appreciation of how much work we actually have in front of us right now: A lot. Prior to actually putting that out in front of me so I could see a bigger picture, I was just beating myself up for not doing more. Now I realize, there's no way I could work enough to finish all these projects. I need help.

I've had Stephen working for me for a couple months now and he's been an invaluable amount of help. I think we're going to be hiring one or two more contract people soon as well.

Part of my stab at project management was also an attempt at scheduling myself throughout the days of the week. This was also a noble effort, but when it really came down to it, our clients don't get along well with schedules -- especially when there's a "red item" on the agenda.

Tuesday afternoon, a client we manage several servers for had gotten complaints from one of their customers that attempts to go to an unconfigured website (via a domain name that was pointed to their IP address) would bring up another website -- a competitor's site hosted on the same server. This made a few people pissed.

This landed a great deal of pressure squarely on me and my "schedule" was scrapped as I spent several hours Tuesday night, Wednesday morning, and tonight fixing the web server configuration to deal with these requests the "Right Way."

It wouldn't have been so hard, but our predecessor had compiled Apache, mod_perl, and mod_ssl from source (and Apache without DSO support). To make matters worse, what worked for one of the load-balanced servers didn't work for another. It was a mess.

So, my job was building Apache 1.3.x, mod_perl v1, and mod_ssl RPMs for these servers (which are running Red Hat 9), removing the old hard-coded crap, testing several dozen websites, and deploying the modified services all without any detectable disruption to client services.

When it was all done and all the sites were loading with flying colors, I forgot all about my frustration with the lack of acknowledgment of my attempt to schedule myself. I was more pleased with the outcome of all that hard work.

Nonetheless, ther'es a LOT of work to be done the next few days.

*sighs*

The Velveteen Pigs

I haven't written about last Thursday's Sons Of Nothing show at The Velvet Room in Salt Lake City so here's my take on it.

This show was a tragic achievement. I say that because everyone -- myself included -- seems to agree the performance was very good, but despite our best efforts to promote this show like no other local show has been promoted, only a small crowd (50-60 people) showed up.

Now, don't get me wrong. Those 50 or so people were a great crowd. Their enthusiasm made them sound more like 150 people.

We knew it was going to be a bit of a challenge being that the show was scheduled for a Thursday evening -- a Thursday evening before the four day Memorial Day weekend. But I thought we had made up for that in our marketing efforts. I really expected and hoped more people to come.

In fact, I had said to a couple of people that if a good-size crowd didn't show up for that show, then I was going to quit the band.

As far as Sons Of Nothing is concerned, I'm really conflicted right now. It's obvious to me that I consider my involvement to be a lot more of a hobby than a career possibility. Because of this, I think I'm both less inclined to put up with crap in the name of "climbing the ladder to success" and less likely to put my real career on hold for band-related activities.

I really want to be involved. I really want to see great things happen. I want to put a little money into this hobby every month or so so I can get more equipment like lights, projection hardware, etc. to put on a killer show.

Therein lies my conflict. Part of me wants to say "screw it," and walk away because it's not going the way I think it should go and I don't feel like anyone else has the same vision I have of where it should go. At least, nobody else in the band seems interested in going in a direction that is minimally disruptive to normal life. Everyone else seems to want to go on two week jaunts out of state and play show after show after show. That sounds great in theory, but our last trip to Colorado was a wash for me. I got very little "work" done while on the road mostly because Internet access was difficult or impossible to come by and our lodging was... yucky. I'm not looking forward to more of that.

Part of the reason everyone wants to play out of state is because the local music scene just plain sucks. Bars are not a popular place to hang out in Utah but there aren't many other places to play live music. I tried suggesting to Thom last week that the band change its collective attitude about the local scene from "this sucks, we're leaving," to "This is going to be hard, but once we conquer the local area, the rest will be easy." I could be wrong, but I don't think he was impressed.

In order to "conquer" locally, I believe the band would need to play new, different places. We'd probably need to bring our own lights and sound along too. All age events would be a must.

The downside is that the band would probably need to play a few shows with no pay soley for publicity and there would be more work setting up and tearing down because of all the extra equipment required to do lights and sound. The upsides, as I see them:

• More frequent shows.
• Shorter drives to show.
• Band would be able to cater to all-age crowds.
• More profit potential - clubs or bars may not be in the middle.
• More freedom to do the show the band wants to do.
• More freedom/responsibility to promote the show.
• Total control over lighting and sound.

So there we go. I don't know what my future holds with regard to the band. I'm up in the air right now; Not really sure which way I'm going to go. It sounds like we've got some gigs coming up in Vail in a couple of weeks and I don't know yet if I'm good to go. I have come to dislike that particular club, but maybe it won't be so bad. We'll have to see how things shake.