For any still running across this site, I’ve moved my blog to my own host at billreid.net.  The domain used to point here anywhere, so any bookmarks would still be OK.  However, I believe the RSS feed will have changed.

So please change your links and thanks for your support.

Quiz: You are a federal institution crucial to personal and business matters of most every United States citizen. You observe a holiday that no one else does. The weekend before this holiday, your PO Box customers’ boxes are filled to the limits.

Do you:

a) Schedule at least one person to work, seeing as you are near the only organization that recognizes this holiday?
b) Leave all the mail you can in your customers’ mailboxes, seeing they will be working on Monday?
c) Screw it – empty the mailboxes, stick a “box full – receive at window” message, then lock up the window and enjoy your holiday?

Finished Tongue-Fu by Sam Horn – a book I added to my list because it was highly recommended by so many sources – even a glowing review by Tony Robbins himself.  Here’s a quote from Library Journal:

“According to professional speaker and consultant Horn, the purpose of Tongue Fu, a spoken form of self-defense, is to guard against psychological attacks. Dealing with difficult people is a part of everyday life. However, by focusing on real-life responses to verbal challenges instead of theories and platitudes, the author has delivered a convenient handbook for the mental martial art of verbal self-protection. Divided into four sections, the book offers techniques and skills for responding thoughtfully in conflicts, expressing honest feelings and goals, seeking cooperation in difficult situations, and living a life of value during trying times. “

I wasn’t really impressed.  95% of the book is basically to avoid confrontations at any cost – heavy use of the phrase “Is this conflict worth risking a friendship/your health/your well being/your life over?  In other words, give up and take your lumps.  The few pages that advise standing up for yourself tell you either to

a) Tell them you won’t take this (and assume this is going to work)
b) Refer you to another book for handling sociopaths

I kept at it in the hopes that it would get better, but it never did.  Live and learn.

I suppose this book might be helpful for someone with absolutely no social skills, or no experience in asserting yourself – or maybe people who fly off the handle at every confrontation.  And I see where Tony’s bit comes in – she advises some specific language to make mild conflicts easier and that kind of jibes with his NLP stuff.  But if you’re a regular person who gets along with most people and has some degree of tact in communications, your money could be spent better elsewhere.

My reading has really fallen behind lately with everything going on, but I finally finished On Method Acting by Ed Easty.  It was a good read and helped me get a little more insight into the renowned Stanislavsky technique.  I didn’t really spend a lot of time with the exercises as it was more of a knowledge read than a practical one for me.  Doing community theater you don’t really plumb the debts of the character’s psyche…  but I wanted to better understand the method and be able to discuss it intelligently with people who are a little more serious about their craft.  And there is definitely some usable stuff there, even for small timers like myself.

On that note, we have also finally filled the cast and started rehearsals for 1940’s Radio Show – hope to get some publicity going soon about it on the Tallahatchie River Players web I’m doing for them now.

A few updates on an interesting week…

• On a very positive note, they finally determined that my mom’s problems were related to a heart irregularity that’s currently being controlled very well by medicine.
• Our soccer team won its first game! This has really been an enjoyable group of kids and getting a win was a nice little rush for everyone involved.
• Sunday was my first service playing guitar in (our new) church orchestra. It’s a lot of fun and fairly challenging, switching styles back and forth so rapidly. It has thoroughly taught me that my sight reading skills are in serious need and I even had to go back to my chord dictionary to find some workable inversions. Will someone please tell me why people who write worship music are so enchanted by E flat????

The lag between updates… well, basically a lot of things going on:

• Renee finished her last chemotherapy session and followed it up with having her port removed. A lot of happiness tied up in getting past what could be seen as the worst of our cancer adventure, but a good deal of pain and struggle related to finishing up this phase of it.
• Sick children – lots of high fevers and midnight vigils
• My mom is having some health problems they can’t quite diagnose and it’s been going chronic for about a month here.  Couple hospital stays involved in it too.
• We had a big ugly episode at our church with some people that are not our friends and found it more sensible for us in the long term to move on somewhere else. We haven’t landed anywhere yet, but some promising prospects.
• Emma started taking a dance class and it’s been very much the family thing to see her off into her first “big girl” thing.
• I took on 6 & 7 year old soccer coaching this season, so a bit of work getting all that up to speed.  On the plus side, I understand we’re supposed to get certified this time, so I’ll have a license to practice recreational sport coaching before its over
• With all this junk going on, I wanted a bit of goof off time, so I put the hours into finishing Ninja Gaiden on my Xbox. I bought it a couple of months ago and got stuck about halfway through, so I put the time into finishing it.

So basically I have been alternating my time between caregiving and lopping heads off. I am such a Renaissance Man…

again?????

This one is actually not mine, just borrowing it a few days.

This is a Japanese Fender Tele that has really been fun. Pickups have all been replaced with Allparts Razors including a new middle pickup. If you look at the controls, a phase switch has been added to let you run the middle pickup with the outer ones either in or out of phase. The switch is a five position too.

This is a manic guitar.  The clean tones are just absolutely bell-like.  Haven’t fiddled with gain any because the cleans are just so nice.

It’s always lots of fun around here.

My latest acquisition as of today. A red sparkle strat with a red tortoiseshell-esque pickguard. They don’t even come close to matching. It’s completely outrageous and I love it. And it’s nice to have a Strat back in the household again.

OK, camera sucks – official product shot:

We went to see Order of the Phoenix last night.  It wasn’t really entertaining as some of the previous ones have been.  Mind you, sets were great, effects were great, acting was decent for the kind of film it is.  It just didn’t have as much of the exuberance that some of the previous ones have had.  I guess this is somewhat necessary, as it’s a big story to tell and only two movies left to get it done. I was kind of disappointed that there was just no character development whatsoever.  Hermione, Ron and Dumbledore might as well have been cardboard cutouts.  But it was still better fare than most of the movies out there, and it’s working toward the end.

And I have to admit cheating.  I did read the bootlegged Deathly Hallows two days before release.   I’m not really big on the Potter series, but I’m very big on spoilers.