If movie space-aliens are so smart and powerful...

After our Monday afternoon meeting at work today, a bunch of us geeks got together for a little geek-chat and something hit us: All of us have seen the movie Independence Day and how the aliens in the movie were superior to us in both intellect and technology. However, we had this burning question in our mind:

Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith went up to the mothership and while docked in the mothership, Jeff uploaded a virus from his laptop to the alien's computer prior to blowing up the mothership. What we want to know is: where did they suddenly get a wireless connection from? Did the mothership come equipped with an Apple Airport Extreme? Did they log into the Apple Store online and order a few thousand Airports? Even more so, what did they use for a credit card? Milky Way Mastercard?  And, how did FedEx get them their package? So many holes here?

And another thing? If the aliens are so smart, how come they never heard of a Firewall and Virus Checker? Sure, they were able to destroy cities with a wall of fire, but they couldn't protect themselves with a firewall?

I guess space aliens are not really that smart, even with all of their technological advancements.

Exhausted from recording...

Who ever thought that recording a bunch of tracks could be so exhausting? If anything, I spent a four hour session laying down some guitar tracks last night and when I was done, I started to pass out in the chair. I wasn't going to push myself to do the bass tracks at that point as I wanted the song to be as tight as I could get it, so it could retain its energy and emotion. But, getting the guitar parts down itself took a lot out of me.

And to think, I'm not fully done with the guitar parts. I still have an acoustic part to record alongside a crunchy-clean electric part as well as a dual guitar lead. And if that starts feeling exhausting, then I had better rest up for the vocals and do the "Zen of Screaming" warm up before recording. No, I'm not screaming in the song, and if I am, it will be screaming in pitch. Those exercises help me breathe and sing.


As usual, I will post it to my Facebook music pages... which, in case you don't know where it is, its at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jordan-L-Chilcott/6109943346

Of Hypocrites and Liars...

I remember once not too long after I got my black belt in Karate, that my Sensei had told us a story dealing with honour, truth, and integrity:

A woman once took her child to talk to their Sensei and the woman had asked the Sensei to tell her child that he must stop eating sugar. The Sensei looked at them and had asked the woman to come back next week. The woman reluctanctly complied and brought her child to the Sensei and once again asked him to tell his child to stop eating sugar. The Sensei complied and spoke to the child about not eating sugar and the child happily complied with his Sensei's request. The woman was puzzled and had asked the Sensei, "For what reason did you make us wait a week for this? Why could you not tell him last week?"

The Sensei replied, "Because I ate sugar last week."

This story has always stuck with me because it ties right in the Bible is that one shall know their trees by their fruits. Bad fruits always come from bad trees. Even worse is that bad fruits spring even more bad trees. If anything, it really bothers me when I encounter hypocrites and liars. I'm not saying that I'm above them... far from it! If anything, I'm more pee'd off at them when they go and teach people one thing and do something totally opposite to what they're teaching. If anything, I know I'm a hypocrite at the worst of times, but I also know that I am not fit to teach others. I may be fit to learn... but never teach.

Would you take serious financial advice from a bum on the street?
Would you take a con-man at his word?
Would you take health advice from someone who's overweight?
Would you learn the Bible from someone who shows little respect to others, and displays this in front of their children?

My love/hate relationship with the 407ETR

One of the things working in Woodbridge that I put my foot down with Joelle was that I was not going to be caught dead in rush hour for 2 hours or so trying to get home. I can handle the 401 coming in providing that we're talking about the normal rush hour (within normal limits... major accidents and obstructions are the exception), but going home is another story. Enter the 407ETR... our toll highway. It takes me from the back door of where I am working to 401 just outside Mississauga. A 32 kilometre stretch, costing $5.75 a trip.

Even though it is not considered cheap, if it weren't for the transponder, it would really be the Expensive Toll Route. However, I can tolerate the cost, although I hope they eventually do adjust them to be a little lower one day.

Here's the thing, however: THESE GUYS GET IT!

The highway is always moving. There are so many lanes going through it to between the 401 in the west to Markham in the east! They add more lanes to keep this thing moving and it really moves. They are totally on top of our travelling needs. They give us great value for what we pay for. I like that in any company that I do business with. A 15 minute trip on the 407 certain trumps a 60-90 minute drive to get to the same spot on the 400/401 combination. This is valuable to me!

I would go as far as to admit that the 407 Consortium should be managing the 401 and other Toronto highways. If they were to do everything for the 401 and perhaps charge a reduced toll for the 401 and 407, I'd take it! If it keeps me moving, I would certainly take it. The Ontario provincial government just does not get it and the Ministry of Transport has created the most inefficient highway infrastructure in their 400-series highways. I can't believe we vote for this crap! If it were an ordinary business, these dudes would be out on their asses and slinging burgers at Wendy's. I wouldn't even trust them at the drive-thru window... keep them away from cars!!!! The dudes at the 407 Consortium are forward thinkers and they have the road to show for it. Even if it isn't cheap, it is moving.

Still the undisputed King of the BBQ!

Now that spring has finally sprung, Joelle and I decided to celebrate the season by firing up the barbeque and chowing down on the t-bone steaks. Well, let's just say that I am still the reigning king of the grill. Those steaks were the absolute best tasting and juiciest steaks one could ever eat. It was cooked to perfection!

It was our way of celebrating as we were preparing for Passover. Yes, I know that Passover begins tonight, but we were not having our seder until tomorrow night. We just weren't ready to begin the holiday just yet. However, we were spending the day and evening together just enjoying each other's company and our steaks. Didn't really touch any guitars this weekend, but that's okay.

Here's to another season of the grill! May there always be some meat cooking on it and may it be pleasing to the smell and juicy to the tastebuds!

Serving Notice: Had enough with M-Audio

Just like the subject says: I'm at the boiling point with M-Audio and I'm about to just cut my losses and just say good-bye! I have owned an M-Audio ProjectMix I/O control surface for 2 years now. When I got it, it was good because all of the drivers were working intact and I had no weird behaviours when mixing with Logic. However, as time went on, the quality of their drivers dropped to worse than crap and the frequency of getting new drivers out is slower than molasses. Even more salt in the wounds is the so-called beta driver that they released for the unit. That wasn't beta... heck, that wasn't even alpha quality. It was garbage and it rendered my ProjectMix entirely useless. I had to uninstall the drivers completely and re-installed the crap for drivers that I had in there to restore it back to its half-baked condition.

It has become the worst piece of junk to hit the market and I am about to cut my losses and get rid of the thing and pick up either a Mackie or Euphonix control surface, depending on what I can get from my fave dealer for the trade-in. I don't need the audio interface in the ProjectMix because I have a much better interface/tube pre-amp feeding my 24I/O that I can also use standalone if I happen to need more inputs than the 24 that I already have. If anything, all I want is something that works, and M-Audio has now failed to deliver.

M-Audio's stuff has become nothing more than a pile of worthless junk and their quality control for their software is non-existant. I don't need substandard crap in my project studio and I am totally prepared to dump that piece of garbage at a loss in order to get a project studio that works at least as good as when I first got the ProjectMix. If M-Audio cannot be bothered to provide me with a proper set of drivers for the ProjectMix and keep me as a satisfied customer, then I see no reason whatsoever to provide M-Audio with my business when there are other reputable businesses that are simply dying to give me more bang for my buck. All I can say is consider yourself on notice and you had better show me something by the time I'm ready to obtain a new MacPro for the studio. And don't drag your feet either, because it won't be that long, and the other companies are simply itching to serve me. I've had enough with your crap and I don't have to take it anymore. I have a project studio to run!

And don't take this personally... it's only business!

First Project Jitters

I guess I should be careful what I ask for... today my impatience got rewarded, but time will tell if it turns out to be more than I can handle.

I got handed a project today and it is a pretty big one. To top it off, it is my first project. I'm not gonna cower from this... heck I never cowered from anything Trapeze threw at me. I'm just jittery, considering the fact that this is my first project and I want to make it work. If anything, I want to kick it as hard as I can and show what I am made of... which is hopefully some good stuff. That's what makes me more nervous than anything else. I'm still quite unproven, despite the fact that everyone has seen my coding style and likes what they see so far.

I am going to plan this thing out... I actually have time to do that. It's giving me a chance to sharpen my UML chops. Let's hope it helps ease the jitters.

If you're reading this... wish me luck.

Did I do the right thing?

I don't know if it's everything that has happened today, but I am really starting to wonder if I really made the right move by leaving Trapeze. Yes, I know that the hours and the pay are better and I get home at a saner hour and even wake up a little later, but I feel something missing that I got from Trapeze. It's hard to ignore this. Not to mention that I think that my timesheet got pissed around with, which means that my money will get pissed around with. It's not so much that I have bills and stuff to take care of. It's more of a case that I feel like I am trying to do the responsible thing and I am getting messed around with. I never got messed around with in a manner like this at Trapeze.

I felt useful there. Hell, I even felt a degree of respect there. I'm feeling almost lost here, and I don't know if I'm being being played around with. I've been itching for a chance to get my hands dirty and it hasn't happened. If anything, I was in from the get-go with Trapeze. Heck, part of the stuff I was privileged to be a part of won an award, for the first time. I never got to be a part of something like that in the past.

Is it too early? Or, am I feeling something legit. Thing is, I have to remain committed to this decision and give it some time. Even more so, I'm not going to go crawling back to Trapeze. I do have some pride to consider, especially since in the end that despite the respect I got from them, I didn't feel valuable enough to fight for.

So, where do I go from here?

Pushing my buttons...

Today has already started off to be great freakin' day with the devil just hammering at my buttons trying to find the one that makes me explode.

To start off, I can't seem to get out the door no matter how early I wake up in the morning. Can't find the pattern there and break it. Traffic pile-ups between Milton and Toronto... courtesy of the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (they are the most primitive agency... heck, they should get the dudes to run the 407 to manage our highways - they get it!!). And, the cherry on my sundae is a scum-sucking brainless twit in a blue Ford F-150 that just decides to cut me off and almost wanting to get into an accident. The butt-head probably got his license out of a cereal box! He has the brains of a dead cow... and that's an insult to the dead cow.

And to think... my day has only begun! I'm gonna be in such a fantastic mood when I go pick up Joelle from the airport... and worse of all, she doesn't deserve to be at the end of my acid tongue. So much for today!

Big CD score this weekend: Complete works of Robert Johnson!

This weekend I scored big while going out for lunch with Josh. We decided to take a walk around the mall, and I decided to take a walk into HMV and just browse just for the sake of browsing. To my surprise, as I was having a look at the blues section, I found the complete recordings of Robert Johnson that he did back in the late 20's and early 30's. I felt like I was playing the of part of Ralph Macchio's role in Crossroads, except for the fact that I have a lot more than 12 songs. In fact, there were 41 recordings in this collection, full of alternate takes and such. Now, I have something to go along with the Robert Johnson guitar video that I found not too long ago.

If anything, I'm going to give my ears a treat and listen to this stuff today. I'm hoping that when we go down to Florida this year, I manage to find a bunch more stuff like this, such as Son House, and a few others. Plus, I am going to find the guitar stores down there in hopes that I find some more guitar videos teaching the styles of Rev. Gary Davis, Lightning Hopkins, Mance Lipscombe and others like them.

Hard questions... hard answers!

Today, my 13-year old son discovered that I was a teenage alcoholic and drug user, and he seems to think that it is the cause of his troublemaking. I spent half the night painfully recapping everything that went on in my childhood starting from finding my father collapsed over a dresser in his bedroom all purple, only to have him die that night. And that was only the beginning. It got worse when my mother re-married and found I had a step-dad who ignored me, unless I turned my guitars up.

I had to go through all of this with Josh, and tell him that the only reason I did those things was not to feel good, but to stop feeling bad. I also told him that booze and drugs only make things worse as well. A lot more things go tangled in my life as I took more booze and more drugs. He also discovered that I had several suicide attempts as a kid, but was totally glad that I was unsuccessful. After all, he wouldn't be there being totally glad. Neither would have his brothers and sisters.

It was hard to deal with Josh's older brothers and sisters when they were young, only because I had no idea what a father figure was supposed to be back then. I managed to figure things out a lot better these days after being saved and discovering, or should I say re-discovering, God and how he cares for us, and how we should care for our kids in a similar manner. I do find that I want to be a better father to Josh than I was to his siblings. I also know that the window of opportunity is still there, and I need to grab it while I can.

Although I find I'm better than I used to be, sometimes, going back gives me some degree of pain. And I don't feel like re-living it anymore. I'm hoping that this will be the last time I ever have to go through it with Josh. Plus, I'm hoping that he realizes what he goes through has nothing to do with what I went through. After all, at this point, he still has both of his parents around that love him very much and are there for him in every way they can be.

One little victory...

Those that have been following my life, or reading up on my FaceBook profile, and are aware of my freak knee accident that occurred demonstrating a weapon (the Bo) to a group of orange belts, and got further debilitated by unknowingly altering my walking habits, weakening my entire left leg, may be happy to know that I scored a tiny victory over this injury this week.

In a way, I have been doing my own form of "physio" on my leg by not only exercising it out on a bike, but also doing some strength training on an bow-flex unit. When I started, my left leg could barely handle 40lbs of resistance and I had a top pedalling speed of 16Km/hr. This week, I am pleased to report that my left leg can almost comfortably handle 50lbs of resistance and I have achieved an average pedalling speed of 26Km/hr. As well, I have been working out the rest of my body on the bow-flex and have not only felt my energy level increasing, but I have also dropped 7lbs.

If anything, it has been a huge step this week, and is just one little victory. To celebrate, I have upped my resistance all over by 10-20lbs, depending on the exercise, and I am ready to start the process over again. I realize that I have a long way to go with my leg, but that's okay. I'm considering this a long-term investment!

I am looking forward to the next little victory. Believe and achieve!!

Note to self: Don't take cell phone to bathroom!

If anything, I'm posting this more as a reminder than a blog because everytime I have to go to the bathroom, my cell phone goes off. It just makes me wonder who has that impeccable timing when I'm "taking The Browns to the SuperBowl". I can't call them inconsiderate, because they don't know that I am currently indisposed and I didn't make any effort to send that message, either by turning off my phone or leaving it locked in my bag.

Or, better yet, why don't I simply answer the phone and try to hold a conversation in the middle of my "symphonic movement"? I'm sure that the it would not only prove to be amusing as I try to express some words such as "Philadephia" or "Boston" (practice these words in the middle of your chore), but I'm sure that the caller on the other will start thinking twice as to whether it may be a good idea to give me a call.

Until then, it's time to start taking some cell phone measures before going to the white room. :)

Oh me of little faith...

I have a nickname for Tuesdays. I call 'em "It happens Tuesdays!", or a little stronger language, depending on the severity of it all. Things always happen on a Tuesday, or so it seems, more than any other day for me, and it seems to be a very noticeable pattern. Stuff of this nature happening on any other day, seem to be more of a freak occurrence than anything else. I am starting to think that it often tests my faith, and it puts me through various events with the same lesson.

Today is no different...

Driving in this morning, the 401 was backed up from Wellington County and I thought that it was going to be yet another slow day coming into work. Sure enough, about 15 minutes later, I wound up at the cause of the back-up, which was an accident on the westbound 401 involving a white Grand Prix and Transport Trailer carrying a full load of cars. The car was t-boned by the truck, and I am certainly inclined to believe that the car was at fault. My best guess is that the drive believed it could outrun the truck and cut in its lane... and miscalculated. As much as I hate to say it, but I felt that the truck driver did the only thing he could: hit the car. A jack-knife could have thrown the vehicles it was transporting onto the highway causing more chaos.

Sure enough, I was thanking the driver of the car for his totally selfish move causing traffic stoppage in both directions. Even more so, I believed that it was going to be a day to take the 407 in, so I dug out my transponder and thought to myself, it would take a God to get me to Mississauga by 7:30'ish and even that seems impossible to do.

Shows how much I know. It's as if God went, "I heard that... just watch!", and cleared the traffic all the way up to Mississauga Road. I got there at 7:34am. I even got here 10 minutes earlier than I normally do. God is hopefully smiling at me going "Oh ye of little faith!", because when I think of how I challenged God in that manner, I saw myself as having little faith. I'm just glad to have a God that is more than willing to roll up His sleeves for me just to show in His own little ways, and they are little to Him, He is God!

Apple Mail: close and yet so far!

Because I often send my blogs via remote email, I have to use a different email client. Why? Because Apple Mail doesn't do HTML. This to me totally bites. I had to download Thunderbird just so I can send blogs. That's all! How ridiculous is this? Mail does everything else for me... it just won't do HTML.

All I can say is this: C'mon Apple. You build WebKit into Mail and we can read HTML mail perfectly. How about the ability to leverage WebKit and write HTML mail??

The only thing that helps me is that the email box they are both tied into is IMAP'd, so I don't have to worry about losing any messages to the other email client.

That's my rant for today!

God is not a vending machine...

This is something that I have been telling my 13-year old son all weekend, mainly because he would often pray to get various things and when they didn't happen, he would always question why. That's when I would tell him so. While I believe that everything is God-given, I don't believe that we get it by saying a prayer and pulling a lever and watch it drop out of the sky.

Funny enough, my daily devotionals dealt with complaining and bellyaching. My Saturday study passage illustrated the very premise that God is not a vending machine and yet everyone in the desert was complaining and whining that things were not going their way, because all they had to eat was manna. They had manna and yet they wanted meat. God gave them meat and then they wanted something else. If it's not one thing, it's another. And don't think that God didn't give them more than what they bargained for.

Then I stumbled upon one of the questions that asked if God ever answered my prayers which proved to be costly... and sure enough, there was a time. I remember once getting a Lincoln Mark VIII, and while it was a nice car, it proved to be more than what I had bargained for. It became costly to repair. Insurance was a nightmare once I got into an accident with it. It was hard to handle in the winter time. That was only the beginning. All of the costs piled up pone on top of the other and it just got to a point where it wasn't worth it. Fortunately, at a crossroads, I managed to find the answer and the choice I needed to make and was fortunate enough that God provided a way out for me and managed to get rid of the car. Happily enough, all of the costs went away with it.

I've learned to be careful what I ask for... I will get it, and possibly more than what I bargained for!

All the King's Horses...

... and all the King's Men weren't around to help me put this studio back together again. PITY!

I finally got everything all back together last night before having to take down a wedding for Joelle and the first thing I did was plug one of my guitars into one of the tube pre-amp inputs and the first words out of my mouth were "OH MY GOD!" Everything just sounded so alive!
All of a sudden, some of the amp models were just jumping out of the speakers. Notes were sustaining like they never did and there was a certain fire! Talk about music to my ears! I dialed in one of the Marshall amp models and plugged in my ol' Ibanez Destroyer. I started hearing it the way I used to hear my old KISS albums. It was almost as if Paul Stanley were in the room playing. I even got a treat that I never got out of a straight digital interface... FEEDBACK! Yes!!! The guitar will feed back on a tube interface. It sounded totally mind blowing. I definitely feel a song coming on.

The two day rewiring project was more than worth it. It helped me clear out the gear that I was no longer using as well as helping me find which other gear is nearing the end of its life, such as my ol' Multi-Verb III, which will probably not be replaced either as my Ibanez SDR-1000 (which is older) is more than worthy for the job and has held out longer and would probably be used in conjunction with my RockMan XPR (if that holds out as well... if not, it's been nice).

It's play time!!

Deluded...

I must be deluded if I believed that ripping apart my entire studio and putting it all back together would have taken just one night. If anything, it took me all night to just rip it all apart. Things are starting to go back into place bit by bit, but this is definitely no one night job. Combined with the fact that I promised my son that we'd do some stuff today and that I promised my wife that I would take care of her business while she was gone, this is probably going to take me
all weekend to get done.

Oh well... so much for music this weekend. I can't even pump some music through my iTunes because everything runs through the rack and the rack is in no state to have any audio through it at the moment. Oh well... I should just shut up and get back to work.

It's Ripping Time!!

I went to Staples and picked up a little label maker along with some extra label tape with extra strong adhesive. I'm going to get out my screwdrivers and I am going to go into the studio and re-arranging my entire rack, ripping out all of the cables and re-organizing and labelling them. I am also ripping out my old Roland R-8m drum unit that I had for 20 years. It served me well, but it's time has come.

I'm probably going to be in there all night and probably into the early morning in order to get things running in an efficient manner. This way, I can have easy visual access to my most used equipment and leave the least used stuff in a spot where I know they won't be as needed.

If anything, the way I have things right now, it's so inefficient. I can't see my tube pre-amps and some of my other stuff in not handled as much. I'm also going to label the cables that I hook into the pre-amps because I don't want to accidentally plug a dynamic or ribbon mic into a phantom powered cable. That would spell the end of the mic.

I am definitely looking forward to a more efficient studio rack... IT'S RIPPING TIME!

What were they thinking???

Finally, a question today that has surpassed my usual "why has someone never invented a sound-proof toilet bowl?" derives from this link:

http://www.asylum.com/photos/20-vintage-breakfast-cereals-that-would-disturb-todays-youth/691432/

What were people thinking when they came up with these types of breakfast cereals????

The worst part is that I remember the majority of these cereals from their commercials. I never ate any of them, and looking back, that seems like a good thing. Some of the things that they wrote made me laugh out loud. Here's a piece:

Honestly, what's more appetizing than chowing down on some crunchy loggs? Wouldn't you just love to pop a logg in your mouth and experience its rich nutty flavor? It tastes just like what you'd get if a cartoon beaver took a dump in your bowl. Mmmm...delish.

They forgot to mention that it also looks like a cartoon beaver took a dump in the bowl as well. Some people in marketing positions were probably overdosing on too many Magic Puffs (another breakfast cereal).

Changes...

Sometimes, I think it's weird how differently I have been viewing everything this week. I mean, things changed practically within a heartbeat last Sunday. Now, it feels as if not only have my eyes been opened, but my soul has been awakened. It feels as if I am not in the same place anymore. Even though I have seen the same things over and over again, everything around me feels so new and different. Life feels different. I see new things in Joelle that are fascinating. Joshua seems different as well. Even music has taken on a different beauty that I can't explain. I can't explain anything at the moment. It's as if God has given me another chance and another point of view in life.

All I know is that things have changed... and so have I, and I like it!

A tiny answered prayer goes a long way...

This past Sunday I got a an answer to one of my prayers that, although may seem small and insignificant to anyone else, felt really huge to me:

Our former pastor, who has stepped down at our church to do bigger and better things for God's purpose, is someone that I always related to musically. Whenever we used to play on some special worship teams together, I always felt closer to God because of him. Not because we was our pastor, but because it felt like we charged each other up so much that it almost as if we could light up the entire church building and then some. You wanna talk about being gripped by the Holy Spirit, this was unexplainable to the point of overwhelm. If anything, I don't know if his new position will allow us to do worship music like that again, so all I wanted was that chance to do this once more, even if it turns out to the be the last time (which I hope not, but one never knows). That's all I prayed for.

My prayer got answered when I was playing at his send-off party last Sunday. In our second worship set, our worship team leader right into the song asked the pastor to come up and sing with us. It didn't take another second to realize it all, and I was so overwhelmed with joy, I was practically drowning in my own tears. Funny enough, we were singing "How Great Is Our God", and to me, nothing could have been more true at the time. It was way too much to contain, and I was playing it out so hard on my guitar that I was surprised that I didn't break a string.

It was such a tiny prayer, but it was answered in such a big way to me. It truly showed how great is our God!