ScottandMargo.net

I discovered Brad Sucks back in 2006 or so and blogged about it at the time (Brad Sucks: Open Source Musician?). I've enjoyed his album, "I Don't Know What I'm Doing" quite a bit since then. I realized recently that I had just downloaded the album and never really got around to paying for it...which really sucks because I really like to support what independent artists are doing.

I got around to fixing that a couple weeks ago by hitting the tip jar on his Music page. When you hit the tip jar, Brad sends a button. The button I got was of the cover of the album. Sweet.

In January, Chris Whisonant did a blog post called "Do guitar players really play Guitar Hero?" Most of the guitar players answered "no" in the comments. I play Guitar Hero and I play guitar, but I suck at guitar, so I don't think my opinion counts on that yet. I did find video on Youtube of a genuine guitar player playing Guitar Hero...

These are becoming interesting times for music in general and for a Nine Inch Nails fan in particular.

Last month, Ghosts I-IV was released online with no warning. My copy of the CD version arrived last week.

Then the other day, the main NIN site updated again with another "2 weeks" post...like the one that went up two weeks before Ghosts dropped.

Yesterday, the single "Discipline" drops in all its disco industrial pop yumminess with a free download. The Comments field in the MP3 says, "Go to www.nin.com May 5." A new album or EP maybe? Rock! I like the new clean, sober and beefy Trent.

The multi-track remixable download is out for download too.

Would it be snarky for me to post a remix that just clips the vocal false start at the beginning of the song?

I little while back, i am jen posted a new idea on her website. She offered up custom hand made CDs for sale. You pick the tracks and the title, she creates unique artwork to go with it.

I have a thing for signed stuff, not so much as a collector, but more for the experience of connection and closeness to the artists whose music I love. So of course I had to jump on this. I agonized about the playlist and title for a long time but got there eventually, and here's the result:

I'm really jazzed. It's a one of a kind piece of artwork to go with a custom mix and a cool way to connect with an artist. I love it and I'm glad I did it. Jen posted a video on Youtube called "Each one is Unique." You can see mine here and there in the video, especially around 00:32.

....or how I noticed my body language at concerts.

On March 13th, Margo and I went to see Toby Mac and Jeremy Camp with some friends at the Patriot Center. I never saw or heard their music before, so I was going in having no idea what to expect. Also since I was there with friends that knew their music, I felt like I was being watched. Kind of like when you're at an ethnic restaurant and they give you something to try...and they watch you eating it to see if you like it.

For some reason, I was paying attention to my body language more than normal. I was stiff, a little closed off and looked like I wasn't into it. Actually, Margo asked me if I hated the show.

I did really enjoy the concert though. Jeremy Camp and his band were fantastic. I wasn't as much into Toby Mac's music but he and his band put on a really entertaining show.

I thought about it and I think I know why now. When I'm watching someone perform, I'm paying real close attention to what they're doing. How they vocalize, how they hold and play their instruments, when the guitar players change effects, everything. I think it's the frustrated musician in me. This concentration tends to keep me from more outward appreciation of what's going on.

It makes me wonder for smaller venues if anyone on stage looked out, saw me and thought "he thinks we suck". I hope not.

I can't do anything about the past but moving forward, I'm going to be more aware of my body language out there. I hope that maybe if there's other people out there like me that they'll pay more attention too.

In the Domino blogging community people have been putting up posts about how and when they got into working with Lotus Notes and Domino software. I wasn't going to post anything because my story's pretty mundane. I will follow up with a "How I got out of working with Notes" posting later..

In 1998, I started with a biotech services company in a mid-level systems administration role. Up to that point, my experience was mostly in call-center and desktop support with some server administration too. When I started with this new job, I was doing desktop support but also spent part of my time doing administration. The way our department handled coverage was that everyone had a primary and secondary area of responsibility and we all overlapped. I was strong in Netware and Exchange, so I was primary for those systems. They needed someone to back up the primary Notes administrator so they told me I was going to do Notes. We had 6 or so servers with a bunch of Notes client-based applications that supported a lot of the work that our company did.

The more I worked with Domino the more I was impressed with how the server platform seemed to be able to do whatever odd thing we wanted to do with it. I'll never forget one thing we did there. Since it's a biotech company, we dealt with a lot of sensitive medical and customer business information. We wanted to replicate selected information back to our customers but didn't want to do it over the internet for security concerns. We set up a dedicated Domino server for replicating to specific customers. We had selection formulas set up so that the replication server had the required information. Then we set up a Dial-up connection to the customer's server and made our replication server replicate through that. So the server would dial out direct and push the data to the customer.

When it was time for me to leave the biotech company in 2000, I decided I wanted to make a career out of working with Domino.

My next job was at a dot-com called Eyecast. Their business model was to digitally capture closed-circuit camera feeds, transmit them back to the servers in our data center for archival, and allow for real-time viewing and control of cameras over the web from a browser. Most of the work was being done by Domino servers on an s/390 mainframe. What we were doing there was so far out, I really started to love the Domino platform. It seemed like you could do almost anything...except make money appear out of thin air. Eyecast dissolved in 2001.

Without turning this post into a long-form resume, my next job was my last job as a Domino administrator. It would probably better fit into the post about how I'm not working with Lotus software anymore.