Todd Bradley’s Galaxy

Ahi was the name of my laptop (notebook) PC that I worked for hours to set up to do digital recording. For the last year of the 404 Not Found live experience, I used it along with software synthesizers instead of a traditional hardware synthesizer. I learned so much through trial-and-error of getting it to record multi-channel audio, that I wrote a series of web pages about it. People still occasionally send me emails, even two years later, saying thanks for warning them about such-and-such.

Well, Ahi died last week. I now have a new laptop. Here’s the final entry in my “laptop based DAW project journal”:

March 31, 2005 – The Final Chapter

Ahi is dead. Two weekends ago, I was watching TV and typing on my laptop at the same time. I noticed the battery indicator was getting low, so I plugged in the AC power. A second later, I smelled something strange. Another second later, smoke rose up through the keys in the keyboard and my fingers. It was like fog in a bad horror movie. And at that moment, I knew Ahi had breathed its last breath. I cried out and yanked the power cord out.

I’ll never know for sure what happened. I may have plugged the AC power cord into the USB connector in the back, sending a huge amount of current through the USB circuit path. That shouldn’t be possible, but on later inspection I saw that it is just possible to fit the plug of the AC adapter into the USB port. Bad design! Another possibility is that I plugged in the power cord where I was supposed to and something just shorted inside.

I was totally shocked for about an hour. First off, I knew I’d just destroyed my laptop computer. Second, I realized that I hadn’t backed up either of the two scripts I’d been working on using Ahi. I was more upset about the possibility of losing 30 or 40 hours of creative work, than about the computer itself.

But things turned out for the best, I suppose. I took Ahi into a local PC repair shop the next day, and they were able to recover my files off the hard drive. And Ahi was still under the 3 year Best Buy Personal Service Plan that I’d bought along with it. I took it into Best Buy that same day and they said they’d have to ship it to their service center to see what could be done.

Today, I got a phone message saying they were going to “junk out” the laptop. That means it would cost more to fix it than it’s worth to them. So, they let me choose a brand new laptop off the shelf. I didn’t get one of the original dollar amount, but rather one of the a “comparable technology.” I was happy with what the sales rep suggested, and now I’m the new proud owner of a Toshiba M45-S331. It’s got a 33% faster (at least) processor than my old PC, twice the hard drive space, and a built-in 802.11g WiFi connection that actually works (unlike the 802.11b on the vpr Matrix).

I’m not sure how much – if any – music stuff I’ll be doing on this machine. A couple months ago, I took my Linux PC and converted it to Windows XP for use as my primary music computer now. It’s so much more stable and fast than Ahi ever was. I imagine I may need or want to do some mobile multitrack recording someday, but that’s certainly not in the near future since my band 404 Not Found essentially split up and played our last gig exactly 1 year ago from tomorrow (April Fools 2004).

But I’ll leave this website up, in hopes it continues to be educational to other people trying to set up Intel laptop based digital audio workstations. If you are, good luck to you!

Whiskers Go Wild at World Beard, Mustache Games: Looking to compete in a freestyle mustache competition? Well, look no further!

Every once in a while, I find myself in a discussion with friends or at work about shopping malls. I live in Broomfield, Colorado, which now sports a regionally popular mall called FlatIron Crossing. People come from all over to go shopping at this mall, or, rather, this mall complex. It’s actually about three or four shopping centers all in the same area.

When I was a teen, I enjoyed hanging out at the local shopping mall. There was an arcade and a food court and a record store, and what else could a teenage boy want? Well, there are also teenage girls, and a few other stores. Anyhow, everyone I knew was excited when FlatIron Crossing opened up, and I was too! But that only lasted until my first visit. I really don’t like going to our mall too much now. Parking is terrible, and the mall shuttle bus they set up to make it so you don’t have to drive around from section to section is even worse. But mostly, it boils down to there not being very many interesting stores in the whole place, and those stores being scattered at far ends of the mall complex.

So, I thought I’d describe to you the shopping mall I’d make if I were Emperor of Broomfield. I call this imaginary place by the dull name Todd’s Shopping Center.

First consideration is access and parking. It would have a five story parking garage, with at least three of the levels underground. That way, the whole thing would only require a fraction of the land that our sprawling megamall takes. And the mall itself would be one big structure that’s about three floors high throughout, with a lower level underground like Cinder Alley used to be at Cinderella City. Again, this would make it quicker and easier to get from one store to the next.

Next consideration is food choices. You can’t have a shopping mall without a food court. This one would consist of a main lower level with an upper section that circles the main level on a kind of balcony. The whole place would get direct or indirect natural light, but it wouldn’t have to be as big as two football fields. In addition to the usual “permanent” food court stores, there would be a half dozen smaller cart-based vendors. These could specialize in things like crepes (yes, I stole this idea from FlatIron Crossing, which does now have a crepe cart), hot dogs, fruit smoothies, ice cream, etc. Two or three regular “sit down” kind of restaurants would also be adjacent to the food court. Of course, if I were emperor, at least one of these would be a good Cajun joint, and one would serve sushi. And one of the carts would make Chicago style hot dogs.

Now, on to the stores themselves, arguably the main point of a shopping center. Todd’s Shopping Center would be anchored by a Fry’s Electronics on one side and The Tattered Cover on the other. There would be a Black and Read, for used books and music. And something like Guitar Center, where you can buy musical instruments and accessories. There would be some sort of thrift store, to make it convenient to pick up raw material for Halloween costumes and art projects, etc. There would also be a games store that carries console and PC video games, board games, card games, role playing games, etc. – both new and used. There would be an Ace Hardware store at Todd’s Shopping Center, or better yet a locally owned non-chain hardware store (as long as there are fair prices). And of course, we’d have the usual shopping mall stores, like clothing, sporting goods, jewelry, etc.

There would also be a grocery complex attached. It would include a seven-day-a-week farmer’s market, a general purpose supermarket, an old fashioned bakery with both breads and pastries, and a butcher shop that has naturally grown beef and bison.

Finally, there would be some entertainment outlets there. My mall would have a ten theater movie complex, but with special rules. Six of the screens would show the usual current popular Hollywood fare. Two screens would always be devoted to current independent films, like Landmark Theaters does in the Denver area. And the final two screens would run an ever changing list of older films, with one of them always on a certain theme. This one might, for instance, have Hong Kong Action Movie Month and show about 10 classic movies of that genre. Or it might have Christopher Walken Week, or a Rat Pack series, or a series on The Evolution of the Western. In addition to the theater multiplex, my mall would also feature The Video Station for movie rentals. And it would have a 200 seat stage for local bands and entertainers to put on concerts, dance recitals, plays, lectures, etc. The award winning idea for my mall is the library. Yes, I would have the city library be built right onto the shopping mall.

One other unique thing about Todd’s Shopping Center is how it’s built. The whole thing is built with a heavy emphasis on natural stone and glass. The parts of the roof that aren’t glass are covered with solar panels, used to provide some of the hot water and electricity for the mall. The whole place has little areas scattered around where you can sit down and relax; nothing fancy, just benches or comfortable chairs here and there. And there would be free high speed wireless internet service throughout the whole complex. So, if your family wants to shop for another hour, you could stop and check your email, or read online reviews of certain products to help you decide if you want to buy something.

Well, there you have it, Todd’s Shopping Center. It’ll never get built, because I’m sure that financially it would sink like a lead balloon. But if I were Emperor of Broomfield, we’d do it anyhow. A mall I could really enjoy visiting on a cold, snowy Saturday afternoon in March.

iriggs blog ENTRY 1149: “She makes another quick swerve lane change and gets into the middle lane. She’s pulling up on my right side now, to give me a piece of her mind i believe. What she does not know is that a CHP unit is in the right lane. He’s been there since the 5 freeway interchange. I saw him pull on the freeway there, and i’ve been driving steady at 55 along with the rest of traffic.

She pulls directly next to me. Cell phone still on her left ear. Right hand comes across to give me the finger. At this point i have the camera already snapping shots. She’s so into giving me the finger, that she does not notice the CHP unit drop in behind her and light her up.

It was a bright day with beautiful clouds, so the pictures were not too clear of her, but there is no doubt, she’s got no hands on the wheel.”

If I still had an SUV Backlash blog, I would’ve put this there. Check out the link for the photos. Also, it turns out there’s a “Women in SUVs” blog! You can find that here.

Boing Boing: Sims-style anti-teen-pregnancy ad from Belgium – This is pretty good. As Boing Boing says, “This is a very clever anti-teen-pregancy ad produced by the Belgian health authority (inexplicably, it is in English). The advert uses animation in the style of The Sims to depict a teen mom being run off her feet and gradually losing her shit completely — funny and sobering at once.” It got me to thinking why we never see the US government funding interesting ads like this.

This past weekend was my birthday. On Sunday, I turned 36. So, I had to have more fun than usual. Unfortunately, I have a cold, again. This is the 2nd one in a month! And so I’m really getting sick of it. I think this one’s finally going away now, but it peaked from Thursday to Saturday.

Thursday night, Beth and I went to Bayou Bob’s for Cajun food. Yum yum! I really like that place. I had gumbo, fried shrimp, mashed potatoes, salad, and hushpuppies. Then, we went to Fado for their Saint Patrick’s Day celebration. It was a madhouse – a thousand people crammed into a white tent shouting at each other, and a couple of bands. We were so close to the stage that sound quality was fairly bad. I think I understood about 4 words the singer sang, out of a dozen songs.

Friday night, Mom, my cousin Deb, and I went to see the world premiere of Vertigo. That’s a production from Boulder’s Lemon Sponge Cake, a contemporary ballet group. I thought it was good, and a whole lot less painful on my ears than the previous night. The dancing – especially the second half – was pretty abstract. I think the first half was better. There were a couple dancers who were amazingly good, and a couple who were obviously a little shakier than the rest.

Saturday during the day, friends came over for gaming and we played the “grand finale” of a D&D dungeon crawl adventure. It was, as everyone predicted, very anti-climactic. But it was fun. Then, I cleaned house a little and relaxed, while waiting for the evening to roll around. Saturday night, about 17 of my friends gathered for my birthday dinner at Hibachi Japanese Steakhouse in Westminster. Since our kitchen project still isn’t completely done, Beth didn’t want to have a birthday party for me at home. So we went out for Japanese food. It was good, and great fun to have such a big group turn out to say hi and munch grilled food with me.

Sunday was set aside for chilling out. I watched some TV, tried to catch up on boring chores and stuff, and worked on the Danger Beach project some. You see, this summer’s Conviviality Theater production is in the planning stages now. I submitted an idea for a theme, along with 7 other people. Well, my idea, called “Space Monster at Danger Beach” was voted #1 out of all of them. So, we decided to have 2 weeks of movie nights, where the group could watch segments of DVDs that reflect possible ideas for the show. Sunday, I watched parts of 4 or 5 1950′s B-movies, taking notes to later share with the group. I also fought for hours trying to make a DVD on my PC that my DVD player could read. I failed.

The weekend ended on a sour note. It wasn’t a good weekend for electronics. First, on Saturday, I walked downstairs and was about to use my PC, when a huge bolt of static electricity shot out between my finger and the computer keyboard. The PC siezed up then. I turned it off, and tried to restart, but it would just make this sickly buzzing noise instead of booting. I tried several times, and always the same behavior. I felt sure that static had just fried my motherboard or my hard drive or something. Fortunately, though, I found that just unplugging the keyboard and plugging it back in fixed the problem. I can’t explain why, but I was relieved.

So then on Sunday, I was watching B-movies and typing up notes about them in my laptop, when I noticed the battery was getting low. I plugged in the AC cable to what I thought was the power jack in the back. A few seconds later, I smelled some unusual burning smell. And then a couple seconds later, smoke literally began to rise up from between the keys. It was a eerie effect, like a fog machine, coming up from my fingers on the keyboard. I panicked and pulled the power cord out, but it was too late. My motherboard was fried by then. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but I think that either I plugged the power into the right port and some kind of power surge killed it, or what I thought was the power port was actually the USB port and I sent a huge current somewhere it shouldn’t have gone. How is it possible to plug in a power cord to a USB port, you may ask? I’m not sure myself, but that’s what was right next to the power, and when I looked at it, the plastic thing that holds the metal pins together in the USB port were bare. I guess the plastic thing had fallen off at some point in the past.

What I was most upset about was that all the work I’d done on writing the “Danger Beach” stuff and my rock opera “Welcome to Earth, Shorty” hadn’t been backed up. So, I feared I had just lost the fruits of about 35 or 40 hours of really good creative labor. Fortunately, I took the dead laptop in to a local PC service shop and they were able to recover my files from it. I guess the hard drive actually lived. But the technician said the state of the motherboard was quite dramatic. Now I’m sending it in to Best Buy because I happened to buy their service plan when I bought the thing over 2 years ago, and this should (I hope) be covered under it. If so, the PSP is definitely paying off in this case.

This photo is old, from Halloween 2004. I just found that Susan Dorsey took this fine shot of Beth and I dressed up as “GW: The Global Warmer” and “Security Mom.” 

The New York Times > Washington > Senate Votes to Allow Drilling in Arctic Reserve: “Seven Republicans joined 41 Democrats and Senator James Jeffords, independent of Vermont, in opposing it. Those seven were John S. McCain of Arizona, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Gordon Smith of Oregon and Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe, both of Maine.” – Is this the beginning of the end of the long argument over drilling in ANWR? I was happy to see McCain voted against it, at least. He continues to impress me.

Here’s another photo to share with you. This one was taken a couple months ago, but I just now downloaded it off my camera. It’s Beth and Rufus both fast asleep on my chair.

It’s Sunday! And I’m catching up on stuff from the week, and getting over all the partying we did Friday and Saturday night. Please allow me to tell you some about it!

Friday night, Beth and I attended the GRU Prom 2005. GRU is Grass Roots Ultimate, which is the organization that puts on the local Ultimate Frisbee leagues, tournaments, and parties. They decided to throw a party for no real reason at all other than to kick off the 2005 Ultimate season. It was at the Elks’ Lodge in Boulder and the theme was “80′s Prom Night”. So they decorated the place as if it were high school prom from the mid- to late-1980′s. Of course, corresponding attire was mandatory! I didn’t feel like renting a tuxedo, so I got an $8 suit at the thrift store and wore my afro wig. I also shaved all my beard off. Who ever heard of going to prom with a graying beard? Finally, I went to the floral department at King Soopers and got some flowers, out of which I made a beautiful corsage for Beth and a passable boutonniere for myself. Anyhow, here are a couple photos of us standing in front of some specially decorated backdrop they made:

And here’s a picture of Beth driving us home. You can see the corsage I made a little better here. Beth loved it – the corsage and the whole event. She didn’t attend prom in high school, so this was her very first.

We could’ve stayed longer, but left by about 11:15 because I had to get up early Saturday morning to drive to way south Denver (Lone Tree, to be precise) in order to take the exam for my CSTE certification. It was a 4.5 hour test, and by the time I got back home (after stopping for a lunch at Hamburger Stand) it was around 3 PM.

Saturday night, we went to Redfish (the one in Boulder) for dinner and drinks. Then we went to the Methodist church to see a concert. It was the Denver Gay Mens’ Chorus and the Women’s Chorus of Boulder. The place was packed! We should’ve arrived earlier I guess, because the only seats left were at the very back of the balcony. Sound quality wasn’t too great way up there, but what was worse was that it was about 100 degrees, due to all the heat from a thousand audience members rising up into the balcony (and no ventilation). Then we met up with some of Beth’s friends (one of whom performed) and went to the Cheesecake Factory for more drinks and dessert. I think Beth was very happy to be out late two nights in a row.