Observations on the Habits of the Pacific Northwest Anna, #326 in a Series

[annathepiper]

So for various and sundry reasons, I haven't had the time or the inclination to post to my Livejournal; however, in the interests of trying to make my journal a bit more interesting reading and give it content besides quizzes, here's a bit of an amendment to that, as I wax verbose on WTF I've been doing lately.

I've been trying to get some space freed up again on my bookshelves, or at least in the shelf allocated for Stuff I Haven't Read Yet.

I finally read an Elvis anthology that has been on my To Read shelf for something on the order of NINE YEARS... I bought the damned thing in 1994. But it turned out to be a fun read; the theme of it was specifically "Dead Elvis". The conditions for being published in the thing were that your piece had to contain Elvis, and he had to be dead; the general idea was to run with the idea of what sort of impact Elvis' death had on American culture. Some fun SF/fantasy stories in there. A couple of horror-flavored stories, a couple of which actively creeped me out. A couple non-fiction pieces as well. Overall a fun read for an Elvis fan.

I've also finally finished Sharon McCrumb's The Songcatcher, which I can testify after checking on IMDB.com bears no relation to the movie of the same name; it was less satisfying than I wanted, though, for a book that was supposed to be about Celtic-flavored folk music being handed down through the generations in Appalachia.

And I read the second in a mystery series about a chick who's a wedding planner by trade, one of the "person in unlikely profession winds up involved in murders and solves mysteries" flavor of mysteries. I liked the first one mostly because a) it takes place in Seattle, and b) the writer amuses me by having the heroine be taller than her love interest, and her love interest periodically giving her shit about it. The second one was also a fun fluffy read, at least I got up to the very last page and a crucial background detail was revealed about the love interest. A detail which annoyed me to no end, as I can't yet think of a way that this detail can be there and not make the guy out to be a slimeball. Which, as I actually like the character, I really don't want to happen. I'll give the third book a shot, but unless the author can pull herself out of this one, I may have to turn around and sell the books in question for pissing me off. Sigh.

In the meantime I have also been working on finishing off H.M.S. Surprise, the third Patrick O'Brien Aubrey/Maturin novel. It took me several tries to actually get going on the darned thing; O'Brien's prose has a way of bogging me down in details of scenes I don't actually find interesting, and in this book's case it started off that way. Once I got over the hump at the beginning the story picked up considerably, though. And I am amused by and respectful of O'Brien's being an author who is not afraid to make his hero fat... and to have his best friend regularly giving him shit about it. ;) I do, however, wonder how the heck Jack Aubrey manages to remain "corpulent" (as Maturin describes him) at sea!


Music has continued, though I have been bummed by the reduced attendance at our Jam Sessions lately. I've been the only guitar on hand for many weeks now... which is kind of suckful because I am the least experienced guitarist in the group. On the other hand, I have at least been getting more guitar practice.

I've also been finally digging into another thing that has been on my shelf for eons having nothing done with it: a songbook of the songs off a-ha's first album, Hunting High and Low, the one released back in the 80's with "Take On Me" on it. And I'm trying to play "Take On Me", though the damned song is giving me fits because some of the chords are apparently misprinted.

F#m and F#m/G# appear in several places, and so do C#m and C#m/G#, but the problem is that for each of these pairs of chords, the songbook only displays the fingering for the first even when the actual chord name displayed is the second of the pair. So I'm confused as all hell and trying to delve through my chord books and the nifty chord frob that solarbird gave me, trying to figure out exactly what I need to be playing there. Mostly I have discovered that all the variants of F#m and C#m are total FUCKOFF chords that require me to either add two inches to the length of my fingers, or bend them at 270 degree angles. Bleah.

If I take the song down a step into G but capo on the 2nd fret to keep making the right sounds, all the main chords become infinitely easier, but it still leaves me with the problem of trying to figure out exactly what an Em/G and a Bm/G ought to be.

On the other hand, I have finally figured out what fregging key Great Big Sea's "Ferrylead Sealer" is in, and now I can actually use the nifty tabs I have for this song and play along with the recording. Even if it IS a morbid ditty about a ship going seal-whacking, what the hell. It's a GOOD song. ;) Very typical of Darrell Power's once having joked that they like to put catchy tunes to morbid lyrics, get the tunes stuck in people's heads, and then have people go "OHMIGOD!" Heh.


Been coding like a sunuvabitch, on the webpage for Two Moons MUSH. I have now finally posted a Search Page for the players to use to search the database I spent eons setting up last fall... and not only does it give you a nice table of search results, it also lets you SORT THEM. It has clickable column headers AND if you click a column more than once you can toggle between sorting in ascending or descending order. I am very, VERY pleased at having accomplished this.

But for purposes of making my resume look shinier, though, I think I may have to go get an XML book and see if I can run through a second draft of this project, take out all the bits where I'm manually echo'ing out HTML, and see how I can do it with XML. All the Software Test Engineer or Web positions coming over my search engines are all BLAH BLAH BLAH XML BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH.


Been trying to do the preliminary work on the trilogy I want to write. Gulp. Mostly this has involved thinking about the backstory of the culture where the story takes place... and the backstory of specific crucial characters... and identifying things I've got to do research on. This story is going to take lots and lots and lots of research, I think. The trick is going to be figuring out how to properly balance doing the research, and actually writing the damned thing.

In the interests of at least some initial research as well as broadening my literary horizones, I have purchased three new books to go onto my To Read shelf: The Shipping News, Kit's Law, and Cape Random, all of which are novels that take place in Newfoundland. Ideally, once I read these I may get a better feel for what aspects of Newfoundland I might want to research further; I've got a couple of history texts I also want to acquire, but they do not appear to be in local bookstores. I'll have to order them.


Although with Dar's help I have figured out that my little Velo handheld computer is not in fact dead, that in fact its battery packs are just old enough that the damned things have no juice left in them, I am now presented with the challenge of trying to see if I can install the software to have the damn thing talk to my laptop on XP.

I have tried to run the Setup off the CD, but 1) this thing was written before XP came out so it thinks my computer is running NT, 2) it claims it wants to shut down and restart "Remote Access Services", of which I can find none in my Services on the computer. I can find services with SIMILAR names, but I'm scared to mess with 'em.

I am wondering whether I should go buy a more recent version of Microsoft Windows CE Services, one that can actually comfortably talk to XP... but that leaves the problem of whether the frob would still talk to the laptop anyway because IT is running WinCE 2.0, and it has that in its ROM. I don't think I could get newer ROM for it, since the makers of the device quit making it and don't support it anymore.

Or should I just say fuckit and get, at least at some point in the future when we have the money to spare again, a new handheld computer?


Went and saw Two Towers for a third time, with mamishka and ssha, and the movie did indeed hold up well to a third viewing. I'm still pretty much in a cinematic limbo, as I am feeling zero inclination to see anything else that's out right now. But now that the trailers for the summer movies are coming out, I am very much looking forward to those. The Matrix flicks, the second X-Men movie, Terminator 3, Master and Commander (of COURSE I'm going to go ogle Mr. Crowe in June), and of course Return of the King. There is much movie promise later this year. I hope it holds up; I need something to look forward to.

Comments

[wingedelf.livejournal.com]

Mostly I have discovered that all the variants of F#m and C#m are total FUCKOFF chords that require me to either add two inches to the length of my fingers, or bend them at 270 degree angles. Bleah.

So i suppose you're saying that playing them as Em and Am rooted barre chords is Right Out?

If I take the song down a step into G but capo on the 2nd fret to keep making the right sounds, all the main chords become infinitely easier, but it still leaves me with the problem of trying to figure out exactly what an Em/G and a Bm/G ought to be.

Erm, wouldn't that be somewhat like the modified G chord that Alan uses in Trois Navires de Blê, but adding the G instead of the D?

Re:

[annathepiper]

It's not playing the F#m and C#m chords themselves that is the problem; the base chords I can play fine. :) In fact, I'm doing them as Em and Am barre chords, I believe. The challenge comes in when you throw in the G#.

I'm fairly sure I know how to do an Em/G... the fingering I am aware of involves the usual Em + G on the low E string. I am open to further suggestions though. :)