This lithophone at the MIM reminded me of the old Barry Hughhart book The Story of the Stone. Sunday didn’t really have that much that was going on. This was actually a relief. I did some reading and made dinner, and that was about it. It took us seven months, but Stephanie and I finally [...]

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This week was a very busy week, which is why there were so few blog entries. Monday, I cleaned up and did prep work, because: Tuesday, a bunch of the trivia crew and Steve and Stephanie came over for food and Rock Band 3. Nathan brought his Pro drum set, which was pretty complicated. It’s [...]

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This is a serpent in a case at the MIM. The serpent was the original bass brass instrument, but it was inconvenient to play and hard to transport. Improvements in metalworking and instrument design by the 1800s made it so that the more convenient ophicleide, tuba (and later, the sousaphone) basically replaced the serpent. Sunday [...]

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As you travel Life’s highway, make sure you take some time to stop and eat the flowers. This pig has totally absorbed that lesson. Friday had pretty ordinary and usual work stuff. We all went out to the Coney Island for lunch, mostly because Bill likes that place. I have to do some work on [...]

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Well, heck. Wednesday brought a bunch of unwelcome news. Apparently, Steve’s going to be laid off soon. This cast a pall over the regular Rock Band 3 festivities, even though we had the usual Chinese food and rocked out to “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake. And after Steve left, I saw that Kari had [...]

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This harp at the MIM was sort of creepy-looking. Anyway, Tuesday had relatively ordinary work things, along with a bizarre problem. Corporate wants some stuff done. They are unwilling or unable or incompetent to send me the files necessary to get that stuff done. So, I have to subscribe to an automated service that’ll theoretically [...]

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Here we see the roll-making end of the marker piano referred to in the last entry. (Larger JPEG of the assembly.) This piece of machinery totally looked like it was built before modern safety regulations. It had a 120V electrical cord attached to it as well. The last time I saw a cord like that, [...]

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Here’s another pic from the MIM, where we see a “marker piano” which was used to create player piano rolls. Basically, someone read the music, set all 88 keys to how they should be set, then pushed a pedal to advance the music roll 1/16 or 1/8 note. This was extremely tedious. It took about [...]

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Friday was a relatively ordinary day, though it was Dan’s last day. At least the management bought pizza for everybody. We heard Larry tell a tale of a company he used to work at years ago, where a couple of people had been fired over IM. Seriously, their managers sent them instant messages saying, “You’re [...]

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Confused by this image? That probably means you’re just not a huge nerd. Wednesday was a relatively normal day at work, and after that, I had Stephanie and Steve over for Rock Band 3 and dinner. This all worked out well. Steve’s moving soon, which should be interesting for him. Thursday, I took the day [...]

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