The Life of Riley is a weekly post that details my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 406): As Impaled As I Wanna Be

I caught a mouse in the morning and had to dispose of it because that’s not a woman’s job in my house. Once I got back, we went to beach and I almost got impaled. It was a windy day, and thanks to the ninja like reflexes of a city kid, just before I got nailed by a beach umbrella flying through the air toward my chair like an out of control rainbow javelin, I moved at the last second and let it fly over my head. It was followed by a woman running full bore who eventually caught up with it before it blew into the water. I can’t remember a lot about the woman except that she ran really fast and was wearing such a small thong that 2 Live Crew would’ve blushed.

Once we got off the beach, we picked up my weed whacker from my parents and went over to the house to weed whack a little. To relax after the fifteen minutes of real work, we went to a local restaurant and then to Fascination (mentioned before in LOR Day 216). I told #1GF! that I needed to get a job because I need a major distraction from the money pit, and she told me to write a book. I just want it noted that she once again tried to keep me from getting a job.

Monday (Day 407): DVR Over Food

The DVR wouldn’t recognize any keyboard, so I worked on it until 2PM because the DVR is the only computer in the whole world that #1GF! actually likes. I ended up fixing the issue, only to have to uninstall Zone Alarm (and move to the McAfee firewall) because it suddenly refused to allow exceptions. From there, I wrote the Life of Riley until 7PM, leaving nothing available for dinner because I didn’t go food shopping. #1GF! didn’t seem to care because her DVR was working.

Tuesday (Day 408): Remixing

I decided to skip posting and spend the day working on something that I was interested in. You’d think that a guy with no job would spend his days doing everything he wanted to, but I put a lot of time into writing here, and have difficulty getting away from the “post-a-day” mentality. It felt like I scheduled a vacation day for myself.

I spent a good portion of the day remixing Brad Sucks, and then threw together a quick video for it using some footage from my cell phone. The video was only created to distract from the quality of the remix, but then the video quality wasn’t very good either, so I’m not sure what I really accomplished. Once I was done, I put the video on YouTube like I was some sort of internet kid. That may be the only video that I ever make, but #1GF! was impressed, and I didn’t have to waste any bandwidth to put the remix in a post.

In the late afternoon, I did some food shopping while listening to the Hood Internet Mix Tape Volume one (my favorite of their mix tapes so far), and then called the contractor. He never called me back, so I had to go to the rental office to ask for another month in the apartment. That’s always a good time.

Wednesday (Day 409): The Aodix Sequncer

I woke up with a headache that wasn’t going to stop me from playing with some more free audio programs. I figured out an issue with the Hydrogen drum machine that wouldn’t allow me to add new drum kits without crashing the program. Once I could make beats, I created a close approximation of Dr. Dre’s “Ain’t Nuthin’ But A G Thang” to learn how to use the Aodix sequencer. A very helpful VST instrument for reproducing the high whines of West Coast hip hop is the MinimogueVA Lexus. It’s a completely, and amazingly free instrument that does a good job creating the sounds of the mini-Moog, which was a staple in Dr. Dre productions.

I spent about 14 hours playing with the sequencer and never got out of my work clothes. Work clothes you say? Yea. My work clothes aren’t quite “leaving the house” clothes, but aren’t quite “lounging around the house in basketball shorts” clothes. Even though I don’t work for a boss, changing clothes creates a mental distinction between home and office when there is no locational distinction. You’d be surprised how effective this can be at keeping me from sitting at the PC at all hours of the day and night.

Thursday (Day 410): Digital Digging

I wrote a little bit in the morning, but then quickly slipped back into playing with the Aodix sequencer. I worked out a version of the Night Rider theme, and then started creating my own song. I downloaded a lot of free VSTs to bring out different sounds, but most of them seemed to be geared toward techno, so it was difficult to find something better than the MinimogueVA. Once I had given up, I downloaded even more kits for the drum machine.

Once I felt like I was set up, I went looking for artists that supply free a capella vocals for remixing. I looked through Jamendo and the Creative Commons, but ended up giving up before I found anything I liked. I appreciate artists giving remix permission, but sifting through all the shit to find a gem is tiring. the process actually made me appreciate record labels because they tend to provide at least a basic level of quality.

I spent years digging through boxes looking for records, so I enjoy spending hours trying to find new music. Unfortunately, when you’re going through a fairly unlimited haystack of unsigned artists, you’re dealing with an even lower level of general quality than you’d find in the musty boxes under a flea market table. A lot of internet artists haven’t passed through the basic filter where someone who knows something about music has vouched for them as being good enough to be signed to even a small label.

Record digging is like being given a wheelbarrow full of dirt and being told that there’s a diamond ring, a gold ring, or a silver ring somewhere in there. With digital digging, the wheelbarrow becomes an 18 wheeler, the dirt becomes manure, and the person who told you about the ring claims that his tin foil hat is made of real gold. Most of the time, you end up feeling frustrated and a little bit stupid.

Without that basic level of quality, you click on shitty band after shitty band after shitty band, and your fingers get frustrated long before your ears are satisfied. I’m sure that a great remixer can spin gold out of something mediocre, but if you don’t have much remixing skill, good raw materials might mask the lack of skill, while poor ones will only serve to highlight it.

Friday (Day 411): Cape Cod and Google

#1GF! had the day off, so we picked up her mother and we went to visit her family who rented a house on The Cape. Her mother filled the tubes of a beach chair with water and I ended up spilling it all over myself when I went to put it in the car. Now, it was claimed to be an innocent mistake, but how does a beach chair get transported from the cellar to the living room without a drop spilled and dump a quart of water all over me with a small amount of jostling? Uh huh. Har har.

Once we arrived on the Cape, we all went to a local beach. It was $15 to park per order of the town, so I figured that the beach was probably really nice because it’s only $3 to park at our local beach, and our beach is decent. I brought along my kubb set, but immediately walked it back to the car because of how tiny and packed the beach was. You could either sit on the sand packed against your neighbors, or you could wade through a fifteen foot jungle of seaweed to get to where you’d constantly have giant gobs of the stuff floating around your head or brushing against your back. I chose the water because seaweed is less annoying than people who wear visors. The water was warm and the waves were random and sloppy like we were in a giant pool.

After a few hours of ignoring the seaweed and enjoying the company, we left the beach to take the kids out to my favorite salt water taffy place in Yarmouth (mentioned previously). We picked out a couple of pounds of taffy from all the baskets before heading back to the cottage to eat and play Scattergories. As is usual with games played by #1GF!’s family, there was a lot of yelling, pencil throwing, punching, cheating, and general mayhem. At one point, Knight Rider was mentioned, and I played the Knight Rider theme that I had worked out the day before in the Aodix. I knew there would be a use for it if I waited long enough.

It started getting late, so we headed home and encountered a storm that you only see in biblical and horror movies. The lightening was jumping around the sky, and the rain was coming down in sheets. To make things more fun, Google maps found us a shorter ride home. It failed to tell us that the route included six miles of bone jarring ruts that limited speeds to no more than ten miles per hour. The lack of lights, the dirt road, and the beating rain only needed a flat tire and a mysterious stranger to make horror movie cliches seem like they had a basis in reality.

We finally made it to pavement, only to be sent down another dirt road that was only a little wider than a car width. When we eventually made it back to pavement once again, Google tried to send us to an exit that no longer existed. #1GF! decided to ignore Google and take the correct exit anyway. By then the rain had stopped and we could finally open the windows because we no longer had driving rain or anyone in the back seat. The car filled with the cool, moist air that wiped out all sound, and made the trip home feel almost like a reward for Google’s tricks.

Saturday (Day 412): Elderly Day

I made blueberry buttermilk pancakes for #1GF!, and then we sat down to figure out what we owed to the contractor. At noon, we went to WalMart and bought an umbrella with a built in pile driver. you heard me: Built In Pile Driver. Resist me, beach. Booyah. We didn’t go to the beach to try it out, because I got scorched on the Cape. Instead, we put on our Velcro shoes and went to the mall to stay cool. Then, we went to dinner at about 4:30 and went home to watch Rescue Me because Matlock and Murder, She Wrote weren’t on.

While we were sitting there watching, I realized that I smelled amazingly bad. It was the type of smell that makes you think that something must be wrong with you. It was brutal. It was worse than when I wore an onion on my belt, which was the style of the time. You couldn’t get white ones, only those big yellow…zzzzzzzzzz

What I Learned

• I still have the reflexes of a ninja.
• I learned to use the Aodix sequencer well enough that I could create approximations of “The Knight Rider Theme”, “Ain’t Nuthin’ But A G Thang”, and “You Can Do It”.
• I figured out how to add drum kits to the Hydrogen Drum Machine without it crashing.
• I learned about VSTs and how to add them to a sequencer
• #1GF! likes her DVR more than food.
• Cape Cod beach parking is a ripoff.
• The West Coast Whine is created with a mini Moog, which can be approximated with a free VST called MinimogueVA
• Google needs a nut punch for the directions it provides on Cape Cod.
• I made a video and put it on YouTube. It wasn’t hard, but I’ve never made a video or put anything on YouTube before.
• Check chairs for water before putting them in the car.
• Nantucket sound is really warm water considering it’s on the outside of the cape. Our beach is colder than that.
• Digital digging is faster, but far more aggravating than traditional record digging.
• Even unemployed people need vacations.

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