well.

August 1st -

well.

there are three weeks left of summer. That happened fast. I was expecting to have a post every day or every few days on my vacation, but obviously that didn’t happen. Collectively, we had 9,000 photos from the trip, so it was a little overwhelming to go through them all every day, and after the first few days, I just gave up. Here are a few highlights (be sure to click all the links for photos!):

We toured the Celestial Seasonings tea factory. It was pretty cool. They have a room full of mint that will make your eyes water. Then we went antiquing and I wrestled a bear.

Day three, we drove to Delta, CO. Along the way, we stopped at scenic overlooks, explored summertime Vail, found an abandoned marble processing facility, and went hiking in an aspen forest. It was a fairly scenic drive.

Day four, we left Delta, drove through increasingly red, rocky, arid terrain until we got to the full-fledged desert of Moab, UT. We took an impulsive dirt-road detour that turned into a 30-mile back route that put us near where we wanted to be. We got out and took photos a few times along the way.

We went to the Colorado National Monument state park, and hiked around for a bit. It’s this enormous canyon that has a road all around the rim so you can drive around gawking at the immensity of it all. There are also plenty of trails to go on, which we certainly took advantage of.

Once we got into Utah, the scenery changed completely. Everything was dry, red, and rocky. We took this super-scenic back way into Moab that snaked its way alongside the Colorado River, with the looming red canyon walls on either side of it. It was really pretty.

On the fifth day, we went into Arches National Park in Moab, where we took the “fiery furnaces” tour, which was fantastic.

Then we did some more exploring in Arches National Park and headed back to Denver. Along the way, we stopped and went ATVing in the mountains. It was lots of fun!

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August 19th -

well.

There is one day left of summer. I leave for Pittsburgh tomorrow. Just sayin. I completely failed at the whole blog thing this summer, so for that I apologize. I’ll eventually get pictures up from the rest of the trip… but that probably means never haha.

For now, I’m hitting “reset” and pretending like I didn’t just not mention practically everything that happened this summer.

TIME FOR SCHOOL!

Day One in Denver

I was going to start this post with “so” but then I thought about how many other posts I’ve started with “so,” so I decided not to.  I took 634 pictures. Make sure you click all the links! (I also wrote this yesterday, so all these events were yesterday’s…)

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We left home, Sarasota, 85°, 20 ft above sea level, at almost 6AM this morning. We flew direct from Tampa to Denver, packed our bags into a Hyundai Santa Fe, and decided that we should go from a very low elevation to a very high elevation. After a lunch at Chipotle, we headed out to the Mt. Evans Scenic Byway, the highest paved road in America. I got excited about some little mountains when we first got on the road… little did I realize their laughable smallness in comparison to the fourteeners that we were about to see.

We stopped a few times along the way and took a whole bunch of pictures. I climbed some rocks… After about an hour, we finally reached the base of Mt. Evans. The Mount Evans Scenic Byway is a treacherous road, only open during a few months of the year. Everything we had read said that the road opened on May 28, so we figured we would be okay. I called to make sure, and was told that the road’s conditions were almost passable, and that the road could be opened momentarily. So we headed up.

The air got cooler, the trees sparser, and we got to Echo Lake Park. There I found a small pile of snow under some trees, even though it was well over 60° out and I was comfortable in a T-shirt. I threw a snowball at my dad, looked at some ducks on the lake, and we continued up the mountain.

The frequency of little snow piles started increasing until we were driving in a jagged, barren, semi-arctic otherworld full of rocks. It was absolutely breathtaking. We got to a point where we could see Echo Lake from a few thousand feet above it. It was really cool. The neighboring mountain peaks were beautiful and majestic, and the road was cut through the edge of the mountain with a wall of rock on one side and a precipitous drop on the other. I have never seen a road with so many switchbacks and hairpin turns. And on top of that, it was almost too narrow for two cars to pass, so we ended up pulling over to let people pass a few times.

We get to the first snowy mountain overlook, and there’s a snowman on top of a pile of rocks, so of course, I climbed up and got a photo with it. Then we threw a couple snowballs at each other, and I went exploring… I climbed around to the back of the pile of rocks, and started rolling a snowball. The snow was really icy and absolutely perfect for packing together. You could roll your snowball and it would pick up ALL the snow underneath it, down to the grass. I got a pretty big snowball in about three or four minutes. I was being yelled at to get back into the car, but I stubbornly kept rolling my snowball out of sight behind the big pile of rocks. Finally I pick up my snowball and struggle back over the rocks toward the parking circle and my parents. My dad quickly got out of the car and helped me roll two more snowballs and we made another, bigger snowman and left it right at the edge of the road.

We got back in the car and continued along the 14 mile trek up to the summit. We passed this gorgeous lake at the base of a ridge, and stopped to take photos.

After more cliff-edge roads, hairpin turns, switchbacks, rocks and endless snow, we finally made it to the top at 14,130 feet. There was a half-building thing at one edge, and another small peak at the other. I couldn’t make it all the way up to the parking lot at the top without climbing all the way to the summit. So my dad and I put on our hiking boots and climbed up to the top. I got bored just climbing up the switchbacky path, so I started taking shortcuts directly up the rocks. I reached the top, and it was the most breathtaking view I’ve ever seen. It was incredible.

We found the two little bronze markers that signify the summit, and headed back down. We got in the car and started our slow descent. I kept getting yelled at for standing up out the window and taking photos over the roof of the car. But hey, that got me some really cool photos…

The snow on the sides of the mountains looked really shiny, almost like a pearl-color, and I really wanted to go feel it and make a snow angel. So we stopped and I got out, and did just that. But the shininess of the snow was a direct result of its consistency. It was the densest snow I’ve ever felt. The top surface wasn’t icy, but it was very dense and hard. I didn’t make much of an impression in it…

We get down to the bottom (cell phone reception again…) and head to the Curtis Hotel. We check in to the hotel, my mom and sister go to the theater right on the corner to see Young Frankenstein, and my dad and I head out to the Buckhorn Exchange to sample some meats that we definitely don’t get in Florida. The restaurant claims to be the oldest in Denver. It was in this little house-like thing stuffed full of taxidermied animals (including some double-headed sheep thing) with some tables and booths. We ended up ordering the same thing – a special with 4oz filets of buffalo and elk. Everything on the menu was really really expensive, but the meat was very good. Buffalo tastes pretty similar to beef, but it’s much softer, much more tender, and leaner. Elk is also very lean, but it doesn’t taste or feel like beef. It’s got a much denser, chewier texture, while being tender at the same time. It has a much stronger flavor that I can’t really describe, other than that it doesn’t taste like beef or lamb or anything else I’ve ever eaten.

It was a good day.

Michael Angelo Batio, work, and a new head

So I was sort of waiting for something semi-momentous to happen that would necessitate a blog post. Well, that something came on the news last night: “At 2:00 tomorrow afternoon, world renowned shred guitarist Michael Angelo Batio will be playing at what promises to be the biggest guitar event in Sarasota history at the Sarasota Guitar Company.” Michael Angelo Batio?! Really?! That crazy guy who plays that ridiculously awesome double guitar?

Naturally, I had to go.

We wanted to get a spot in the crowd with a good vantage point, and I had a $10 rewards coupon at Best Buy (which is right across the street), so I went with my dad to Best Buy to kill time until the show. We went straight to the musical instruments section. I showed him the $1800 Taylor acoustic that I fell in love with last time I was there, and we were playing around for a bit. Finally, it’s about time to go across the street, but I hadn’t spent my coupon that was due to expire today. So I pick up a guitar cable, thinking “ehh, I could always use a guitar cable…” and stumbled upon the clearance table. Sitting on the clearance table was a 75W Line6 Spider III head for $129.99! I couldn’t believe the deal. So… I bought it, thinking that I could always sell it if I didn’t like it, and I needed something bigger than my 15W combo that I had in Pittsburgh if my music was ever going to get off the ground up there.

We stick it in my trunk and head across the street to the parking lot where the stage and a few booths were set up. A swamp-rock band was playing some okay covers of stuff, but as the ponytailed and pierced population starting slowly growing, everyone pretty much knew that no one was really there for the openers.

By the time the MC had finished throwing T-shirts at the crowd and Batio finally took the stage, there was a fairly large group of people baking in the middle of a parking lot in the 90° Florida sun. He starts his sound check, joking about how at shows in Britain, they charge people extra to sit in on the sound check… he was very animated, and quite entertaining. And then he started playing.

He played a Deep Purple cover (Burn), an original (Rain Forest – see video I took at the bottom), a tribute to Dimebag Darrell, and a tribute to Led Zeppelin. He took a fifteen minute break cause he was dying from the heat, and then he brought out the double guitar.

I have never seen such an awesome guitar performance. He went from playing the right hand neck with his left hand and arms crossed, to harmonizing his leads to one hand playing rhythm, the other playing lead, to shredding on one of the necks… it was really impressive. After the show, he said he would be in the store doing a signing, so my dad and I went into the store where there were at least five different guitars at any given time in various stages of shred and distortion and an inchoate line starting to materialize. I saw the owner of Dean Guitars (who was pointed out by Batio, who is a hugely endorsed Dean artist), Elliott Dean Rubinson, and got an autograph from him on my Dean Guitars catalog. We then joined the line, and after about forty minutes, got up to meet the master himself. I bought his “Hands Without Shadows” cd, had him sign it and a poster, and got a photo with him.

I wasn’t really thinking that I was going to be going to a shredfest when I dressed myself this morning, so I wasn’t as “METAL” as I usually am at such events, but hey, I wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity just because I was wearing a lame shirt.

NEXT TOPIC: job

So I finished my first three weeks at the Robot MarketPlace. I must say, it’s a fantastic job. I’m working with things that I have an interest in and experience with, and the greatest people I could imagine working with. My boss (who has about a 50% probability of reading this… which is kind of weird…) is a “giant man-child” as described by my two main coworkers, and I couldn’t ask for anything better. I’m doing a lot of work keeping our selection of products current and at competitive prices, website maintenance, new product selection, and answering phone calls about technical questions and, if I’m the only one available, general customer concerns. I’ve been really accepted into the family of this business and I couldn’t be happier. I even have my own cubey-desk-computer-chair-place!

I’m going on a vacation to Colorado and Utah in a few days, and after that, I’m going to start doing video product reviews and tutorials for the website. I’m really excited!

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There’s no wisdom at home…

So I think I mentioned how I found a really good drummer at CMU that I had been playing with. We had been both writing really cool stuff and working on playing White Walls by Between the Buried and Me. I said that I would post a video when we got a decent recording of it, so here it is. I couldn’t find anywhere other than Facebook that would let me upload a 13 minute long video, so it’s from Facebook.

THIS IS THE FACEBOOK VIDEO OF WHITE WALLS

Victor left two days before I did, so I had our room all to my lonely self for two days. It wasn’t really fun. I got everything packed up and stored and set for coming home, then I lugged my three suitcases to the airport, by myself. I would pull two forward about twenty feet, then go back for the third, all the way to ticketing/check in.

I had to shell out $100 to the lady checking my bags because both my checked bags were over 50 lbs. My carryon ended up not fitting in the overhead bins, so they checked that at the gate (sort of my plan all along because I didn’t want to pay another $50 to check a third bag…). Getting that bag through security was kind of fun… So I had a wah pedal and two other guitar effect pedals in the bottom of the suitcase that were really confusing the people at the x-ray check-in. When they asked me what I had in the suitcase, I had no idea, so I was like “uhh… lots of stuff?” They really liked that response, so they searched the bag. This was an extremely overstuffed bag to begin with, so they were just kind of impressed by it. The lady searching it called it “the mother of all bags” and told me that she hadn’t seen a bag like this in a long time. I was proud. She pulled out my wah pedal, identified it as a “wah wah pedal!”, and then she, too, was proud. My bag was deemed non-threatening, and I was allowed to go put my shoes on. Then, when she tried to fit it all back in, she gave up very quickly and let me do it.

The transition back to home life went reasonably smoothly… I get home, do some homey things like chilling on the couch watching TV, going to lift at the gym, and putting all my clothes away. Then, Monday morning, I had to take my sister to school. I put my car in reverse, and it jumps backwards, hard. Halfway down the street it jumps forward. It was acting strange. The light next to “D” in the shifter display was blinking, and the engine light was on. So I get her down to school, and take my car straight to the dealership fearful of an exorbitantly expensive transmission repair. Turns out, something (like a mouse..) had chewed through some of the wires to the solenoids in the transmission, and that’s why it was acting funny. A $220 repair is a lot better than a $1000 repair.

And then, at 4:00 that afternoon, I had a consultation with an oral surgeon about removing my wisdom teeth. We decided on an appointment for the next day (this morning) at 8:30AM. So we go in, they hook me up to an IV, and tell me to relax. A nurse took my pulse, and I woke up on my couch with gauze shoved in my mouth. The nurses and doctor said that I was really funny, and they all walked me out to my car. Of course, I don’t remember any of it. After being awake for a bit, I took an oxycodone, and got kind of loopy…

THIS IS A VIDEO OF ME BEING LOOPY

If the video links don’t work for you, please let me know!

Packing up :(

We are nearing the end of our freshman year. It’s kind of ridiculous how quickly it seems to have gone. I think we’re all definitely settled into the whole “college” thing, so much so that it’s going to feel really strange being at home for the summer. I think that if I didn’t have a job lined up for me, I’d be pretty bored after a while. Part of me still wants to go home, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t really depressing to see everyone leaving and packing. Living in a dorm like Mudge is such an intensely social experience. I can’t imagine not being able to walk down the hallway and poke my head into all the open doors to say hi. Living in an apartment is going to be very different. But still awesome! We’re gonna have a kitchen!

I didn’t realize quite how much stuff I had until I started packing it up.

Victor looked at me kind of incredulously, wondering how I got it all here. We loaded it all up into a big pickup truck, and I watched as all that made our room awesome drove off to hide away for the three months of summer. Our room is kind of empty now. There are big awkward spaces where things used to be. I don’t like it. Victor broke down his drum set, and I sent away my speakers, acoustic guitar, and bass, so our room is lacking the “BAM! MUSIC!” that it used to have. It’s really sad.

Five days until I fly home…

Concert 5/2/10 at Mr. Small’s

Well. The day before finals, and I decide to go to a concert. Probably not the best decision in my academic career, but, yknow, after you’ve studied for 12 hours for an exam that’s more about thinking than memorization, another 6 isn’t gonna make much of a difference. Especially if the exam isn’t until 1 in the afternoon.

Anyways.

• Protest the Hero
• Architects
• Oh No! The Afterlife
• Dethlehem

at Mr. Small’s. It was a good show, the roughest pit I’ve ever been in, and the most drama of any show I’ve been to. I went with Alex and Rebecca (both of whom I went to the last show with), and one of my other friends.  We meet up, expecting a cab at 6, end up waiting for another 20 minutes, finally get to the theater around 6:40 (show starts at 7), and I realize that I didn’t grab my ticket. I bought another one at the door, no big deal, but wow. I almost forgot my ticket last time too. Not looking too good on me… Anyways, as we walk in, I predicted “I don’t think we’re  gonna get a spot by the stage this time,” but the theater was less crowded than I’ve ever seen it twenty minutes before a show. In fact, rather than being stuck by the stage right speaker like we usually are, we managed to end up dead center on the stage, with only a single row of people separating us from the bar at the edge of the stage.

The stage was set up with Dethlehem‘s gear. They’re a local Pittsburgh band, unsigned, so we were unsure of what to expect. They come out on stage in freaking Medieval garb, like tunics and armor and chain mail… I was hoping that they would pull off something really impressive musically, since they had the balls to dress the way they did, and they were opening for Protest the Hero, but ehh, it was pretty mediocre. They did put on a decent show though. So. At the end of the mic check, this girl in the front row yells out “HEY!” and the singer looks at her, and growls “what do you have to say to me?” She replies “bring the fucking ruckus” and he comes back with “I will destroy your mind with a spell you wouldn’t believe.” It was kinda funny. They started shortly after that.

A few songs in, this.. thing comes out from back stage, all hunched over and crawly, wearing a really ugly mask. The singer turns and looks at it, and says “what the fuck is that?!” and grabs it by the neck in a headlock. It was followed by a guy wearing a shirt that said “GAGA HAS A WIENER” carrying a big red inflated ball thing. The singer from Dethlehem took the ball thing (which was actually a lots-of-sides-ed die, menacingly said “decide its fate,” and tossed the die up in the air. When it landed, he looked over at the number facing up. “18? You’re dead!” and pulled a sword from somewhere, held it up, and proceeded to saw off the thing’s “head.”

He then tossed the thing down to the stage, and held the head up for the audience to see, as the drummer started the next song. Both the beheaded body and the head lay on the stage for the remainder of the set. They played a few more songs, and as an exit, told the audience that they had “cool slash dorky t-shirts,” along with free “Dethleham” at their merch booth. They did indeed.

Oh No! The Afterlife came on next. The drummer’s bass drum had a few pillows in it, but didn’t have a second head, which we all thought was kind of strange. Overall a younger looking group, they played a pretty decent set. Their guitar players could actually play. I was fairly impressed. The rhythm guitar player and clean vocalist had pretty sweet dreadlocks that looked like a lot of fun. Their style didn’t sound all that generic, and they played well. They even announced a “jam session,” and just jammed for like 3 minutes. At one point the guitar players walked up to each other, and fretted the other’s guitar while strumming on their own. It was pretty cool.

They all got really into it, too. During the first song, every one of them was doing full, 180-degrees-of-motion headbangs, and jumping around on stage. It was a pretty good show. They’re also an unsigned semi-local band, from Slippery Rock, PA, but they played really good stuff for an unsigned band.

During their set, this family makes their way up right next to us. It was a mother (~45 ish), daughter (~20+), daughter’s boyfriend (a big guy I wouldn’t want to mess with), other daughter (~15) and son (~12). It was an interesting group of people, and they seemed nice enough, but ended up being quite problematic.

Architects came on and started setting up. They were playing some really obscure and expensive amps (Blackstar, Orange, Splawn) so I was expecting great things. They introduced themselves (they’re from the UK), and started their set. I thought that I downloaded some of their music, and it was good. Really fast paced, progressive, fit in well with Protest. But it was not at all what these guys played. Turns out, I downloaded “Architect” while these guys were called “Architects.” Ooops. They played really tight, but they were nothing special. We were still at the front of the stage though, and it was an exiting place to be. The crowd had been pretty tame up to this point, but the crowd surfing began when out of the blue, two guys came hurtling off the stage into the crowd. One got held up, the other didn’t make it very far before hitting the ground. As the roughness in the pit increased, the boyfriend of the girl in the family next to us was starting to aggressively shove people away from them. The girl told me she’d break someone’s neck if anything happened to the little kid. Well, that’s all well and good, but you have to realize that you’re in the front row of a pit at a heavy metal concert. So this guy starts crowdsurfing away from the stage, but starts really close to this family. They huddle together to avoid him, and the guy ends up falling on his head and blacking out for a few seconds before struggling back to his feet. The singer of the band motions for the guy to get up on stage after verifying that he was okay, so the guy tries to fight his way to the stage, but he tries to go right through “the family.” They start viciously punching him as the girl shields the little kid from him. Seriously. What the fuck is their problem? This guy just landed on his fucking head from eight feet up because you’re out of place in a metal pit, and then you go and start beating the shit out of him because he’s trying to get to the stage after the band’s singer told him to? Come on! He’s not out for blood or anything, he’s just trying to get to the stage! He didn’t do anything wrong! Jesus. So he gets up on stage and the band finish the song. The singer holds him back as the guy’s about to leap again right before the song ended. He addresses the audience, instructing them that “when a guy is crowdsurfing, you don’t move out of the way, you put your fucking hands up and keep him afloat! Now. I don’t want to see a single crowdsurfer hit the ground.” You could tell he was concerned for the guy who landed on his head, and pissed at this group of people next to me. They started the next song, and the guy jumped into the crowd again, successfully making it across the pit. A song or two later, I look back, and the dreadlocked guitar player from Oh No! The Afterlife is in the pit. I tap him on the shoulder and pound it. Architects finish their set, and Protest the Hero starts setting up. Someone in the crowd shouts “rock and roll pussy hole!” and my friends and I kinda just look at each other… “That’s a new one…”

I have never been in a crowd so desperate to get right up against the stage. The crowdsquish was incredible and unrelenting. But “the family” thought they could take on the whole freaking crowd. They just kept viciously shoving people away from them, just causing problems in general. YOU’RE IN THE FRONT ROW. YOU WILL BE SQUISHED. DON’T FIGHT IT OR YOU’LL MAKE THINGS WORSE. Jesus. So the crowd fought back, and it just got really rough. It’s a ripple effect, yknow? The family shoves people away, they come surging back, with the weight of the entire crowd behind them. The pit got so rough and uncomfortable that we all ended up moving off to the edges of the stage, halfway back in the theater where it was calmer cause we couldn’t take it anymore. Aside from that, Protest played a great set. Most of the songs were off Fortress, but they did play 3 off Kezia (Heretics and Killers, Turn Soonest to the Sea, and The Divine Suicide of K). The mix was really muddy, so I couldn’t hear any of the really intricate guitar parts really well, and the vocals were turned down a little low, but they put on a high energy, entertaining show. The crowd matched their energy for sure, singing along to every song to the point where it made it a little hard to hear the band’s actual vocalist. The guy from earlier in the show who was wearing the “Gaga has a wiener” shirt turned out to be one of Protest the Hero’s guitar players. The singer was wearing a “something corporate” shirt, and explained (while drinking a beer toward the end of the set) that “they sound like this:” and did a nasally, whiny impression of one of their popular songs… and said that he bought it off some dude for $20. I was confused. But whatever. The guy started talking about hockey and the Penguins, and, since he’s from Montreal, there was a little bit of rivalry going on. However, as he clarified, he hates Montreal, and is rooting for the Penguins. He held up a Penguins towel to emphasize his point. They played a few more songs (including Wretch, during which he meowed into the microphone, replacing the cat meowing on the studio album, which was pretty funny). They announced very definitively that they were going to play two more songs, and no encore, and that is what they did. The crowd stood around for a minute or so chanting “one more song!” but they never came back, and once music started coming out of the PA system, everyone knew there was no hope and started leaving.

We had to wait for a cab, so we didn’t leave right away. Rebecca went and bought a $3, unmarked, home-burned demo CD from Oh No! The Afterlife, and my other friend that came with us bought a tab book for Fortress, and a T-Shirt that ended up being a size too big. We hung around for a bit, talking to the guys from Dethlehem, who were really disappointed that no one took any of their ham. So we did. I mean, they were nice guys, and it was just sliced deli ham. But a piece somehow ended up on the floor, followed by a series of comments: “Oh no!” “…how?” “Why? Why??” “Five second rule!” Rebecca then picks up the ham off the floor of the pit, and says that she’d do it. They just kinda looked at her funny, and she took a bite of it. It was pretty gross, but really kinda funny. The guys in the band were just like “dude. That was soo nasty!” and “you are fucking metal! That was probably the most metal thing that happened tonight!” which was really funny. She just kinda laughed evilly and started walking away. The guitar player runs after her, and hands her a cd “for just being awesome.” We thank them, laugh, and leave. Waiting for the cab outside was equally rewarding. We were standing out there for a while, talking about the show, when this guy asks us if we had a lighter. Between the four of us, none of us had a lighter. It was kind of impressive, especially given that two of the group usually have lighters on them. The guy was kinda flabbergasted and walked away ranting about how four people don’t have a freaking lighter. Then we see some of the guys from Oh No! The Afterlife (I think) come out and walk by with some gear, and a dark blue van drives by. They just kinda stop, look at each other, and look at us. “That was our van…” one of the guys says. They laugh, put their stuff down and wait with us. It was kinda cool. They’re all really nice guys. The van came back, they loaded some stuff in it, and followed it around the corner. After a while, the dreadlocked guitar player walks by, and I sort of stop him and say “Dude, I think you guys were my favorite set tonight.” He looked genuinely really happy, and was like “really? you liked it?” He asked if we had picked up cds, and we said no. He fished around in his pockets and pulled out a few of the unmarked demos that Rebecca bought, and handed them to us. I asked if I owed him anything, and he’s like “nah, unless you want to make a donation or something.” I thought I only had a $20 in my wallet (cause that’s what I left with – I forgot I bought another ticket), so I didn’t, but it was kind of cool. The cab finally comes and we make it home by 11:30 ish, leaving plenty of time to study some more.

And a word about Alex – He’s an awesome drummer. I’ve been jamming with him for about a month. We’ve been playing White Walls by BTBAM. Like, actually playing it. The whole thing. It’s pretty awesome. Unfortunately, the song is longer than youtube’s limits, so I’m going to have to put it up somewhere else, but I’ll have a video up before I get home on the 13th.

Red Robot!

I finally got my hands on some Red Robot photos!

Playing Red Robot is so much fun! I get to run around, be obnoxious, and even… *gasp* dance! I would sneak up on people (not really possible because there are speakers on the front of the red robot costume that play music (like Mr. Roboto by Styx and Technologic by Daft Punk) and tap them on the shoulder, or grab their hat and run off with it held high in the air. It was great!

At one point, these two guys were playing frisbee, and I jump in and motion one of them to throw it to me (because, of course, I can’t actually talk). He throws it to me, and I try to grab it. I don’t, and it falls to the ground. I pick it up and sort of throw it 3/4 of the way back to him. We repeat this a few times before I ACTUALLY CATCH THE FRISBEE! It was awesome! I threw my arms up and danced around in a little circle, then threw it back to the guy and moved on.

Lots of people wanted to take photos with me, so I would shake their hands beforehand, then pose with them.

Me with my friend Diane who didn't really know it was me...

There was this group of 5-6 year old kids (I really have no idea how old they were – I’m bad at judging little kids’ ages…) that would swarm me, and follow me, and as soon as I turned to them they would scatter in fear. It was kinda funny. But there was one of them who would follow me, tap me on the shoulder, then back off a few feet while I turned around. I would fake running after him with murderous intentions, and he would run away screaming, then come back and do it all over again. It was kinda fun.

I saw my friend Pepin, and we were play fighting a little bit. Then he pushed me backwards and I exaggerated my falling-backward-ness and leaned back too far, and my head flipped back and fell off! I was exposed! Pepin laughed and lunged in to cover my face (he knows about playing in costume) as I froze like a deer in headlights and ducked down and hid in the robot like a turtle while my “handler” put my head back on. It was kinda funny. I was a little more careful after that.

Then I danced for a bit with the girl who was last year’s Red Robot, until it was time to lead the way back to roboclub for our open house, at which point I took off the robot, actually introduced myself to the last-year’s robot girl, and then took off to go play handler to CMU’s Scotty Dog mascot.

Carnival!

Well. Carnival is over, and we need to somehow assimilate back into the “real world” of classes, homework, and exams. Easier said than done, let me assure you.

Carnegie Mellon‘s spring carnival is an annual tradition unlike any other. Rides are brought in, booths are put up by various student organizations, performances and exhibitions abound, buggy rolls, classes end on Wednesday, and FUN ensues. But this doesn’t sound all that unusual (well, except for the buggy rolls). That’s because you probably don’t know what booths are.

BOOTH: what happens when you give a bunch of nerds a bunch of wood and tell them to have an awesomeness competition.

Basically, every student organization that wants to participate (i.e. frats, sororities, dorms, and various other student organizations) obtains a bunch of plywood, 2x4s, screws, and anything else they want, and they build a walk-through booth. There are two categories: blitz booths, which are assembled on-site in under a week and are limited to 7 x 14 and one story, and competition booths, which are bigger, can be partially assembled off-site, and must have two stories. Oh, and every booth needs a theme that ties in with the Carnival’s theme, and a game.

This year, the Carnival theme was “History With A Twist” and every booth needed to relate to that somehow. I was a part of Mudge house’s blitz booth, which was “A Fishy Evolution,” but other booths had themes like Jumanji, comic book characters, Y2K, RoboRome, 1984, John Wilkes Booth (hah, it’s a pun, get it?), and many others. The amount of detail in some of these booths was absolutely mind-blowing.

Keep in mind that these booths were all assembled in under a week! It’s incredible. This school has so many incredibly talented people… I can’t even describe it!

I played a big part in the initial construction of Mudge’s boof. By comparison to some of the competition booths, our construction was incredibly simple, but we were still quite proud of what we built. Our game was a toss version of ski-ball, where you threw little “sea urchins” at a board with different sections worth different points.

Every booth was inspected and judged, and then the top booths were recognized at the awards ceremony. Mudge’s booth placed second in the blitz booths division! We were all very proud of our little boof.

(for a flikr album full of booth photos, go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cibomahto/sets/72157623867448358/)

Another unique part of CMU’s carnival experience is buggy. CMU has been putting small people in boxes with wheels and pushing them over hills since 1920. It’s an odd sort of sport that is uniquely Carnegie Mellon. Like booth, most student organizations can have buggy teams, but only the organizations with money tend to (like the frats, SDC, CIA, etc). Buggy is intensely competitive, but since CMU’s other sports teams kind of lack that intensity, it’s a good presence on campus.

But now, it’s time to get back to the real world – two more weeks of classes, two weeks of finals, and then freshman year is over! I can’t even believe it. It’s gone so quickly…

Concert 3/23/10 at Mr. Small’s

I caught the second to last show on the Black Dahlia Murder‘s American Defloration tour at Mr. Small’s on March 23rd.

In all honesty, I had very little interest in the Black Dahlia Murder. I went for Obscura, which is one of the best technical death metal bands I’ve listened to. I had listened to a few Augury songs as well, and they were very interesting, so I was pretty excited to see them too. And I had never heard of Hatesphere.

At the last Cut meeting before the show, I mentioned that I was going with Rebecca (who’s been my concert buddy all year), and another Cut member who I had briefly talked to said that he was going too. So, naturally, we went together because three people splitting a cab fare is better than two. We get to the theater early, as is our style. The doors open a few minutes after we got in line. As we neared the open door, a very metal looking guy with long, straight hair and a band hoodie walks out, holding a video camera aimed at us in the line. He walks by and gets some shots of the other end of the line. We get inside and snatch a spot one person back from the stage on the left side, kind of near the speakers.

The pre-show music coming out of the PA speakers was NOT metal, which we found kind of odd, but the audience and the conversations certainly were. One of the guys standing near Rebecca and I was wearing an Animals as Leaders shirt, which made me kind of happy, because Animals as Leaders is a fairly obscure, really, really good instrumental metal band centered around 8-string guitarist Tosin Abasi (who, by the way, is just a really, really nice guy. You would never guess that he’s a heavy metal musician). Anyways, the guys from  Hatesphere start tweaking their stuff on stage. The drummer is wearing a soccer jersey with the number 666 on it, which I thought was pretty cool. Turns out, they’re from Denmark. The singer was beaming the entire set, which was kind of funny given how heavy their music is. They’re not nearly as technical as the bands that followed them, but it was a good opening. I made a face at Peter “Pepe” Hansen (the guitar player right in front of me), and he ended up throwing his pick at me at the end of their set.

Hatesphere

Even though they were the opening band, they managed to get a circle pit going, which Rebecca briefly partook in. They finished their set and Augury came out to set up.

The three opening bands actually all played on the same drum set, only changing out the cymbals, which I thought was interesting. The bassist played a really pretty six-string bass, and he was quite good at it. I recognized the drummer as the guy who was video taping outside as we were walking in, so that was pretty cool. We definitely got in his video. The vocalist was really entertainingly odd, kind of reminiscent of Devin Townsend. Rebecca and I were talking about it afterwards, and, as it turns out, the guy in the Animals as Leaders shirt was at that show in Cleveland too! It was kind of a funny coincidence. One of the hallmarks of their show is a kind of solo-off guitar solo style, where the two guitar players alternate solos. It makes it really interesting to compare their styles.

Augury

They played really well, but I was excited for Obscura. They finish the set, and pack up. The drummer comes to the front of the stage, and is high-fiving the front few rows. I was one of the lucky ones who got a high five from him.

Obscura comes on stage, and the vocalist/guitarist Steffen Kummerer is playing the most radical looking guitar I’ve ever seen a band play with live. I don’t even know what kind of guitar it was. They introduce themselves as Obscura from Germany, and some guy in the audience yells out “WEINERSCHNITZEL!” It was pretty funny. Jeroen Thesseling, the bass player, was playing his usual fretless six string bass. One of the things that makes Cosmogenesis so awesome is how the bass punches through the mix on certain passages, and since Jeroen was right in front of me, I was expecting nothing different from their live show. They open with “The Anticosmic Overload,” followed by “Choir of Spirits,” true to the track order on Cosmogenesis, and the bass/drum/guitar mix was fantastic. I was a little disappointed by how little I could hear of the lead guitar player’s leads, since he was on the other side of the stage, but overall it was a great sound. They played a few more songs from Cosmogenesis, switching the order up a little, then broke for a drum solo.

Obscura

They continued with a few more songs from Cosmogenesis, and finished up with Centric Flow. I knew all of the songs pretty well (though not by name) so when there was a break, my pounding fist would stop momentarily, then pound again when the song continued. Or if there was a complex rhythmic pattern, I would sort of express it with the rhythm of my hands.

Steffen Kummerer

Steffen looked over at me at one point during which I clearly knew the rhythm of the song very well because I was pounding out the rhythm with the pauses and triplets and stuff with my hands, and he nods and points at me with a little smile. When they played Centric Flow, it was amazing. They played it flawlessly. It was so good! It’s such an incredible song. They finish their set, and pack up. As Steffen is crating up the amplifiers on the side of the stage right in front of me, I kept trying to get his attention by pointing at him. Finally, he looks up, and I point at him, and shout “YOU!” He looks over at me, and I yell “yeah, you! You’re awesome!” with a thumbs up. He smiles, and finishes up what he was doing on stage, and leaves as the Black Dahlia Murder set up.

In the dim between-set stage lighting, the guitar player’s guitar practically glowed on its own. It was a bright neon red/pink color. The bassist was playing a really nice looking four-string bass, and they cleared the opening drum set off the stage.

The Black Dahlia Murder

The guy in the Animals As Leaders shirt left before they came on, with a “they’re fucking gaaayyyy” as his exiting remark. We figured we might as well stay, but after a few songs, none of us were really into them. We moved back away from the stage, and just kinda hung out in a calm corner near the back of the theater. I decided that I was gonna go find Obscura’s merch booth, so I told Rebecca and Alex that I was going exploring, and made my way through the crowd to the other side of the pit. It was tough but I finally got to the merch booth, and it was being manned by none other than Steffen Kummerer himself (with Cristian Muenzner, the lead guitar player alongside him). I make eye contact, and point at him, and struggle past the last few people between the table and me, and shake his hand while shouting “you guys are awesome” at him. He nods and thanks me. I point down at the copy of Cosmogenesis sitting on the table, and motion with my hands as best I could to say “if I buy it will you sign it?” He nodded and held up ten fingers. I handed him two fives and he grabbed a cd from under the table, unwrapped it, signed it, then handed it to Christian to sign. I then took my camera out of my pocket, and pointed at myself and then at him and Christian, and he nodded, and gestured for me to come to the far side of the table by him. I had to force my way past a few more people, but I made it to a calm empty spot on the far side of the right speakers, right by the backstage door and the far right side of the stage. You couldn’t see the stage, which is why it was empty, but it worked well for getting a photo.

Christian Muenzner, me, Steffen Kummerer

I looked back out at the sea of people in the pit, and realized that the chances of me surviving a trek back to Rebecca and Alex were very small. I was stuck. So I hung out in the corner where I couldn’t see anything, and the speaker was kind of loud, and waited for The Black Dahlia Murder to finish their less-than-stellar set. I was kind of entertained, however, by the “HEARTBURN” tattooed on the vocalist’s gut that I saw every time he moved into the far left side of the stage (the only part of the stage that I could see). The set ended, and I moved back toward the Obscura booth to really have a conversation with the guys now that we could hear each other. They’re really nice, down to earth guys. Actually, they seem very intelligent and kind of nerdy. I got the sense that they weren’t just goofy partiers like Black Dahlia seem to be. They seemed a lot more refined. Jeroen came out from backstage, and I had him sign my cd and got a photo with him too. I asked about Hannes Grossmann, the drummer, and Jeroen (also a very down to earth, nice guy) told me that he was on his way to the hospital because he had injured his wrist. They were thinking of cancelling the next day’s show! I expressed my concern, thanked all of them, told them again how amazing they were, and then went back and found Rebecca and Alex. We wandered around for a bit, Alex bought an Obscura shirt, and we found ourselves waiting by the Hatesphere table, killing the half hour before our cab was supposed to come. So we started talking to the guys in the band. They were really funny. Definitely a fun group of guys.

Rebecca and I with some of the Hatesphere guys

I felt really bad because they tried really hard to get us to buy some merch from them, but I wasn’t all that into them. I really, really felt bad about it though, because it was their first US tour, and they seemed like they were really enjoying it (and themselves) and I really wanted to support them because they’re trying to make it, living the dream… but, alas, funds are limited, especially for a college student such as myself, and I chose to conserve.

Anyways, we finally go sit outside to wait for the cab, and I notice the daffodils blooming under the sign for Mr. Small’s theater, so I took a picture of them.

While we were sitting out there, the Augury drummer walks down the steps past us, and starts doing something in the van pulling a U-Haul trailer that had been modified to say “Towing? We sell custom bitches! Call us for your bitch.” I went over to him, said hi, told him that he was a phenomenal drummer (which he absolutely is), and we talked for a little bit. He asked my name, and then introduced himself as Tom. Alex came up, introduced himself, and took a photo of us.

Tom McKinnon and me

Turns out, he’s currently just the touring drummer for Augury. He’s part of Humanoid, a progressive acoustic side project by Augury’s founder, and was the drummer for Neuraxis for five years. Very cool guy.

All in all, it was a great night and a memorable show.

We get back, and I went on facebook, but it wouldn’t let me upload my photos (typical…) However, I found Hannes Grossmann. I sent him a message telling him about how I met the rest of the band and they said he was injured and stuff… and he replied! I felt honored that I actually got a personal reply from such an incredible semi-famous musician.

2 months later…

Well. First off, I was alternating between periods of super-business and super-laziness, so I haven’t updated this in a while…

SO. what that means is that I have a lot to talk about. I may separate a few into other posts, but for now, this is the list:

• Shred’s “debut” debacle at Motorama
• Shred’s official debut at Megacon
• The rest of spring break
• Spring is finally here
• Concert 3/23/10 at Mr. Small’s (separate post)
• CD finished, ready to distribute
• Music video(s)
• Room decorations
• Housing plans for next year
• Summer job?

So. There’s lots on the agenda. Let’s start with Shred.

Shred’s “debut” debacle at Motorama
I registered for Motorama over winter break for two bots, Shred and Conundrum. The competition was being held in Harrisburg, Feb 19-21. In planning, I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to get there. Originally I thought that maybe I could use my zipcar membership, but after that got cancelled because of my speeding ticket… obviously that wasn’t going to happen. But, as luck would have it, West Mifflin High School, a school that has a battlebots program that is about 15 minutes from CMU, was going out to Motorama, and offered me a ride and a spot in a hotel room! The team’s advisor is one of the nicest guys I’ve met out here. So I take a bus over to the high school (it dropped me off at the bottom of a big hill that I had to walk up, into the freezing wind, with no gloves on, carrying my two travel cases… I couldn’t feel my hands by the time I got up there), hopped in the truck with two other kids (the rest went in a parent’s Suburban), and headed out to Harrisburg. We get there, park, and unload, and go check the competition status. The antweights were starting their first battle, and I had brought two of them!

The brackets were closed, and they would not redo them to add me in. So I watched. I met some of the other builders that I had been talking to online, so that was pretty cool. I met the infamous Charles Guan as well, but only for a brief moment. After the official brackets were finished, the people in charge let me stick conundrum and shred into the two rumbles that they ran. I drove shred, and let one of the mifflin kids drive conundrum. Conundrum won the first one, but took second to a cow in the second. Yes, I’m being serious. There was a plastic cow placed in the center that “mooo”ed when it was touched. At the end of the competition, the sensor was still mooing when it was touched, so the cow was showing controlled “moooovement” while all the other bots twitched around helplessly. In any case, Shred showed some worrying propensities for inversion, and the stiffness of the baseplate (or lack thereof) also presented itself as an issue. But I had fun. The next day was the hobbyweight competition (which Mifflin brought three bots to compete in). They were having some serious electrical troubles, and there was a lot of work that needed to be done (reconfiguring A123 packs, changing out ESCs, etc) and the kids didn’t really know what they were doing yet since it was the first year in robotics for most of them. So I helped them out a bit. The team’s advisor was very appreciative, and I’ve been appointed the semi-unofficial technical advisor to the team. They did okay, I don’t think they placed because all of their bots had some pretty serious kinks, but they tried hard. The Mifflin team is a good group of kids, and all in all it was a very enjoyable weekend even if I didn’t get to officially compete. And besides the battlebots competition, there was SO MUCH GOING ON! It was a HUGE show, so there were dirtbike races, RC car racing (nitro and electric), car shows, RC rock crawling competitions, go kart racing, Miss Motorama 2010 swimsuit competition, various exhibitions (like doing a wheelie on a tethered bike for$10)… it was enormous, and awesome. I took video of everything I could find, and put it all together nicely into a “Motorama 2010″ video.

Motorama 2010 video
[coming soon - I need to convert it to a lower quality file]

Antweight rumble #1

Antweight rumble #2

Shred’s official debut at Megacon
A week or so before Spring break, I realized that on Sunday, March 13th (the day after my flight back to Pittsburgh), there was going to be a fairy/ant/beetle competition in Orlando. I switched my flight to Sunday night out of Orlando, and went to the competition with Shred, Conundrum, and my dad and his bot Thorn. Getting in to the competition area was a little iffy, cause they tried to make us pay for wristbands for entrance into the “Megacon” anime convention event, which we had no interest in. We were only there for the robots. It took a while to get a hold of the event organizer, but eventually we worked our way in.

It was an extremely enjoyable competition. Right off the bat, Shred flipped over, and lost to Tigger. An RC car chassis with a servo-actuated lifter, and a rubber Tigger shell. It was embarrassing, but all in good fun. I then taped a bunch of big, flat, super-thin pieces of aluminum to the base to make it less prone to flipping over. It worked. But Shred still lost again to Thorn. After getting  flipped a few times (pretty impressively), Thorn pushed Shred into a wall, and the spike moved my electronics into the path of the vertical disk, disabling it, and leaving me stuck in a groove between the floor and the door. Another side effect we discovered later was the capacitor and positive battery lead on the weapon ESC had come loose from the circuit board, so I soldered them back on. Conundrum’s weapon motor pulley was loose the first battle, so I lost because my weapon couldn’t hit anything. Then I won the next two battles (against Tigger again, and another bot that I don’t remember the name of),  but I lost the third by getting pushed into the pit. Actually, I never ended up in the pit. I was pushed in, drum forward, and hit the bottom of the pit and bounced right out onto the side ledge. I couldn’t get back into the arena, but it was pretty epic. Definitely a crowd-pleaser. Then Richard from Miami Lakes, who was feeling kind of burnt out and tired, let me drive Sting in its final match. I won, well, Sting won, because, after all, it is Sting. It was a very enjoyable competition.

Conundrum’s first battle

Shred vs. Tigger

Conundrum vs. Tigger

Conundrum vs. Another bot I don’t remember the name of…

Conundrum vs. Yet another nameless bot

Antweight rumble

The rest of spring break
The first day I was back home, I laid out by a pool with some high school friends to tan in the sun for two and a half hours. I burned like a tourist. I don’t think I’m a Floridian any more… it was probably the worst burn I’ve ever gotten. I used to be able to spend hours in the sun with no sunscreen and not burn. I guess that’s not the case anymore! I peeled for a week!

Spring is finally here
Almost all the snow is gone, and we’ve had 60s and 70s for two or three weeks so far. It’s been wonderful. I spent an entire day doing homework, napping, playing guitar and frisbee on Flagstaff hill. Flowers are starting to bloom in the flower beds by Mudge and Hamerschlag, people are everywhere just being outside, the campus is alive. It’s such a great feeling. Wait, did I say almost all the snow is gone? Yes. Yes I did. There’s still a huge pile of snow in the corner of the parking garage along Forbes. And it hasn’t been below 32 degrees in probably three or four weeks. The irony of being able to throw a snow – er, ice – ball while wearing shorts, flip flops, and a t-shirt, is by no means lost on me. It’s every Floridian’s dream to have snow to play with when it’s warm out.

CD finished, ready to distribute
So I  started writing acoustic instrumental songs back in November… and I finally finished my album Departure. It’s a nine-song album which I’m selling for $10 to anyone who wants a copy.

1. Daemon
2. All Is Not
3. Whispers
4. Equilibrium
5. End of the Line
6. Waiting for the Sun
7. Lace
8. Dream On
9. Departure

I’m playing a 15-minute set at the Cut Unplugged on April 8th in the UC Danforth lounge. I’m going to play three songs off this album, and one more that’s newer.

Music video(s)
Victor and I recorded a song I wrote, and made a video out of it. It’s kind of cool. We used some… unconventional instruments to make some cool noises, including a jar of jelly beans and a bucket of crispy crunchy chocolate chip cookies. A cover of Would? by Alice in Chains is in the works and mostly recorded. It’s still missing a few parts, but it should turn out pretty well.

Waiting for the Sun

Room decorations
Remember the hubcaps that I was collecting a while ago? Ten of them are now hung on our walls as decoration. It’s kind of awesome. There are still eight hiding behind the door in our suite entrance.

Housing plans for next year
The way the Carnegie Mellon housing system works allows you to get a group of people together, and reserve adjacent apartments for your group, called a block. So I am living in a one-bedroom apartment next year with Victor, next to another apartment with two of our really good friends, and a third apartment with one kid I kind of know and another I’ve only met once.  It should be good. The apartments are on the third floor of the Fairfax Annex, which is a newly acquired building that CMU is offering housing in for the first time. It’s a small, three story building next to the big Fairfax apartment building. I’m kind of sort of really excited. We’ll have a kitchen and be able to cook!

Summer job?
While I was home over spring break, I asked Jim, the owner of Robot Marketplace about a potential summer job. He described something that would be fantastic. He described one of the “odd projects that always need to be done” as testing a bunch of the stuff he sells, video taping it, making demo videos, and putting it all on the website. It sounds like a fantastic job. I haven’t gotten a definite yet, because he doesn’t know how things are looking yet this summer, but I’m really excited.