Parallel Johnny

My iTunes player is prejudice.  I went to play my mp3 of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch’s Good Vibrations and it refused to play.  I thought maybe nothing was playing so I tried another song (one not from 1991) and it played.  I then checked to see if the file was corrupted, but all the other music players had no problem with it.

iTunes, you Funky Bunch hater, its about that time to love all my mp3’s …..rap, rock, blues, jazz - feel the vibration.

This weekend was the Nickel Creek: Farewell {For Now} Concert at Meadowbrook.  We had front row seats (4th row if you count the pit).  It was a good concert but I was a bit irked.  Fiona Apple was their special guest.  Apparently her a Sean are friends who play small gigs together at some venue in LA.  So when Fiona came on stage, she joined the other four and sang some songs from Extraordinary Machine.

Let me first say that I am a fan of Fiona.  Despite her quirkiness beyond measure, I love her music.  If in fact this had been any other concert where the five of them teamed up to play each other’s music, i would have thought it to be awesome.  However, this was the farewell tour.  Nickel Creek is no more.  They split up about a year ago after the last album.  This was their time, my time to hear all my favorite Nickel Creek songs live, with them 20 feet away.  Fiona was on stage for at least an hour of the 2 and a half hours that the show lasted.

It was a good concert nonetheless.  They played just about every instrumental song they had.  Most songs were from Why Should the Fire Die.  Fiona came on twice during the night, the first time was completely her time with the band playing her music.  The second time she came out towards the end of the night was dedicated more to bluegrass with Fiona trying to sing in a bluegrass style.  It was amusing.  They did a great Patsy Cline cover of Walkin’.  And the funniest thing was when they tried turning Criminal into a bluegrass song.

All in all, if they would have billed the concert as Nickel Creek and Fiona Apple rather than Nickel Creek wsg Fiona Apple, I may have been more welcoming to the fact that she took half the concert.

Oh, had my reunion yesterday.  I’ll rant about that later.

I got a coffee from the cafeteria rather than the machine today.  This is the most vile, horrible tasting coffee ever.  It tastes like my dad’s (I have my own coffee maker, because his is so bad) or Tim Hortons *shudder*.  Its sad to think I’d rather drink instant coffee from the machine.

Why can’t people just support the local and (in my opinion) the best tasting coffee around, Cadillac — made right here in Madison heights, Michigan.

Just 2 more days.
Tomorrow is my final in signal analysis and Wednesday my packet is due for the scholarship contest.  I have done nothing for either.

I think today I will start the scholarship essay.  I’m not too worried about the final.  If one thing engineering teaches you, its trade-off evaluation.  I calcluated it out that I need a 55% on the final in order to get a B in the class.  This means so long as I don’t crap myself and rub it all over my exam like a primate, I will pass.  And passing (without bringing down my gpa) is all I want from this class.

Some people may say, “but John, if you only need a 55% to get a B, why dont you shoot for an A?”  My reply:  “Because you’re not good at math.”

I’ve done the work and a 55% is the lowest score for a B, however lets say I get an 87%, thats 32% higher on the exam.  Know what my grade is then? a B+.  a perfect 100% will get me that A-, so will an 88%.  But do you know how much that affects my GPA? Not damn much at all.

I think my time is better spent on the essay worth $5K.

How was my weekend?  It was great, but thats going in another post.

A special “digital salute” to the woman on M-59 this morning, who laid her horn on me then threw her arms in anger.  Lets recap:

I changed lanes on M59, from the middle to left lane.  I gave a proper signal (about 4 seconds before making the shift, opposed to the Detroit version where you just hit the signal with your finger as you turn the wheel), and took an opening.  It was a nice opening, too.  I wasn’t going to clip the bumper of the car behind me, who was the woman with the anger problem.

This woman  got awfully close to my bumper once I got in her lane, why?  Because she was trying to go 10 mph faster than everyone else on a fully packed highway.  The thing is, she started laying the horn as soon as I started to turn.  I heard it and backed off a bit to recheck my blindspot.  I was totally in the clear, so I shifted over.  I then realize its the woman approaching my back that beeped at me and is now waving her arms in the air like a primate.  What makes it even better is that she later changed lanes.  No signal, no blindspot check, and accelerated as she turned.

Give me the drivers south of 16 mile anyday over these people.

Holy crap.  It just took me an ahour and a half to get home.

Luckily I had the Tigers to keep me company.  They made me proud again tonight with their final innings magic.  We were behind until the 7th where we took the lead with a final score of 8-5.  That makes us 31-14, thats 1 game ahead of the Sox with a .689.

Pistons lost, so what.  Its baseball that I love.  Everyone talked about the possible double championship going into the playoffs.  Parker and the man asked callers which would they prefer if tehy had to choose one.  Now we may not get either.  Wings knocked out in the first, Pistons almost out in the 2nd and already off to a bad start in the 3rd.

No one talked about the Tigers.  Even after their amazing record breaking start.  They lost the Sox series and everyone said, “See, they’re no better.  They’re gonna fail just like the past seasons.”  Pardon my french, but I said “F*** you, you nay-sayers!  Don’t be telling me how ‘you knew it all along’ 30 games later when they took the MLB’s #1 postion and have kept it to date”

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while now. See, I have this theory of how Coleman planned to make the format changes without losing approval. This is pretty much copied word for word from my comment on Metroblogging Detroit. Go there for the whole discussion.

When Coleman came to WDET he tried something different with the pledge drive. Rather than the normal drive (ask until you reach your goal), he limited it to about 2 weeks. The “nag time” was also limited to only a few hours a day and — if I remember correctly — weekends were left alone. Soon after, they held an emergency drive to try and reach their goal. You would think a plan that resulted in failure wouldn’t be tried again.

Fast forward to the last drive before the big changes. Does anyone else remember this drive lasting only a week? I recall turning on the radio hearing a thank you and thought to myself, “Wow, they’re done already. They must have reached their goal pretty fast.”

The fact was they didn’t reach their goal by a long shot. That motivates people to try a something new and here comes Coleman to save the day. He tells everyone, in short, cut the music, add more news and profits will rise. And to help prove they will, he held the pledge drive for longer than its been in a few years.

But the plan backfired a bit. He wasn’t expecting the outrage. Sure, there were only a laughable few in the streets protesting, but that didn’t mean the non-approvers were still planning on pledging their support. Sadly, if the last drive raised more than last fall, that’s enough proof to the Board that Coleman’s format change was the right choice — regardless of the fact that the spring drive lasted much longer.

From one of the recent people laid off this past week:

Well that’s history now and we can’t go back. It’s a shame it had to work out this way. I hope Irv Reid, Steve Brown, Michael Coleman, Harvey Ovshinsky, and Marla Stone enjoy the shell of a radio station they will have left when it is all said and done.

Know this for sure, the six of us let go in last Thursday’s bloodbath will not be the only employees to leave WDET. Whether voluntarily or by further lay-offs the bleeding will continue. As one of my former co-workers (one who got to stay) told me privately Thursday: “I used to like working here, now it is just a paycheck until something better comes along.”

The city council has voted to ban the use of a cell phone while driving…sort of. Actually then banned the use of a cell phone without a hands-free device. Hizzoner has a week to approve the ban. If and when approved, violators will be fined $100.

Read the rest of my rant at Metroblogging Detroit.

Johnny’s To Do List

• Update Resume
• Submit GDLS Paperwork
• Prepare and Give Lab Presentation
• Finish Take Home Exam
• Start Design Project (and Finish by Monday)
• Study for Thursday’s Circuits 2 Final
• Study/Review for Thursday’s C++ Final
• Study for Electronics Final

Its going to be a horrible next week and a half. No wonder I always change my mind about taking summer courses. Hopefully among all this I can find time to have a life.

This week has been crazy; trying to get back into the groove of school.  I was given a rude awakening realizing that I had two midterms this week.  The first, electronics got me hopeless.  Monday was spent doing circuits homework due the next day.  Tuesday was spent studying for Electronics until 5am.  Wednesday I had lab and more study time before the exam.  Last night after the exam (which went decent), I crashed once I got home.

Today has been spent studying for the Circuits midterm that takes place in two hours.  There is C++ homework due by midnight, but I think I’ll skip this week’s.  I can afford to.

With all this madness, it ends on a good note.  Tomorrow night I’ll be at the Palace seeing Paul Rodgers fronting one of the greatest bands of all time: Queen!
I’ve heard some of the recordings with Paul Rodgers (from Bad Company) on WCSX and it sounds great.  I can’t wait.